


The Old Straight Track

by jjtaylor



Series: Ghost Frank [1]
Category: My Chemical Romance
Genre: Alternate Universe, Ghosts, M/M, Supernatural Elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-22
Updated: 2009-12-22
Packaged: 2017-10-05 00:50:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 30,136
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/35947
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jjtaylor/pseuds/jjtaylor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Death is weird, Frank thinks, though he suspects this is not the way it's really supposed to go.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Old Straight Track

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to ataratah and phineasjones for beta. This story was originally posted on December 21, 2008.

Frank hadn't really thought that pneumonia was going to be the thing that killed him. A car accident, maybe, or some freak electrical accident, or some other, much cooler way to die. But it was pneumonia that knocked his breath out of him, that made him collapse in the hallway of his apartment with his coat and gloves still on, and bag of groceries - salad dressing and orange juice and some dishwasher soap - which he knocked over as he fell forward, and blacked out.

When he wakes up, he isn't in his body anymore. He is still there in his apartment, and it seems like he can still feel his body. He thinks he's still wearing clothes. He's still breathing. He is just not actually doing any of those things.

Frank looks at his hands. He couldn't see through them or anything, but they also weren't exactly solid. He tries to touch the light switch, because he is sitting in the dark. He can feel the switch under his hands, but he can't make it move. Frank figures if he was out of his body, maybe he was supposed to find his body, so he searches the apartment. The problem is that his body isn't anywhere, and neither was any of his stuff. The whole place is completely empty.

Frank loved this apartment. He'd rented it from Ray, who'd converted the big house that had been in the Toro family since his great-grandmother into a two family, updated all the heating, repaved the driveway from the gravel it used to be, and made it into a place Frank was only able to afford because he was a friend of the family, and because Ray didn't actually like the idea of renting his home out to strangers. Frank had his own entrance to his side of the house, and the insulation in the walls was thick enough that Frank couldn't even hear Ray walking around, and so he knew he wouldn't bother Ray on the nights he couldn't sleep because he was coughing too loudly. He was sick with one thing or another almost the whole time he'd lived here. Sometimes he'd see Ray as they were both coming home at the same time. Ray would offer Frank some of Mrs. Toro's home cooking and Frank would offer to help rake the leaves in the fall or shovel in the winter. Ray would always say no, that he liked doing those things, and anyway, Frank was obviously both pretty weak and pretty small and Ray could get it done a lot faster without risking his health. Ray would insist that Frank call if he needed anything and Frank would promise he would, even though he never did call, because he never wanted to bother Ray, because Ray did so much for him already. Frank used to go out, used to go to clubs and concerts and actually leave the house, but it had seemed like the more often he was sick, the more likely it was that he'd just get sick again as soon as it seemed like he was close to recovery.

Ray had been there a couple of weeks ago when Frank had locked himself out, jacketless in late fall and in slippers going to get the mail. Ray had insisted that Frank come in and have something warm to drink, and he'd wrapped Frank in one of his big shirts and talked about what might have happened if he wasn't home, if he should get a lock box outside because these sorts of things seemed to happen to Frank a lot, bad luck things, accidental, forgetful things and Frank had just shrugged because, yeah, that was his life lately, a series of hapless moments between illnesses. He'd had a good time just sitting and talking with Ray, and Ray had let Frank back into his own apartment when Ray had judged him to be suitably warmed up, and he'd insisted they do this again, hang out without the accidental getting locked out in the cold thing. Frank had agreed, but it just never really happened. Frank just didn't want to bother Ray. He was right next door if he ever needed him and Frank didn't think Ray would ever need anything from him, anyway.

Frank needs Ray now, because someone had taken all of his stuff, and left him here, in an empty, dark apartment, with no cigarettes. Not even a fucking tea kettle. Maybe it wasn't that big of a deal, that much tragedy, because he hadn't had that much stuff in the first place, and nothing of real value, but it had been his.

Frank laughs, suddenly and a little hysterically, because he's thinking about all his lost stuff and not thinking about being dead, which he's decided is the only explanation. He's dead, or a ghost, or probably both, and he was upset because all his stuff was gone. He hadn't really done anything all that great with his life, but he'd still had time, or he thought he had, to do whatever it was he was supposed to do. He thought that was the way life worked out, you just went along and the things you were supposed to accomplish just made themselves known and there you were, living your life. Frank had never expected he'd die of pneumonia, at what he thought was a reasonably young age, and then be stuck, as a ghost or whatever, in his old apartment. He may not have had much of a plan, but this certainly wasn't a part of it. He feels lost and desperately alone, his thoughts racing, swinging from one thing to another, panicked ideas that this was Hell, or that he was just hallucinating and he'd wake up in the hospital, none of it making any sense or making Frank feel any better.

It takes him a long time to realize that the jangling sound he is hearing is someone was unlocking the door, and that the light had changed, that it was seemingly earlier in the day than it had been a few minutes ago. The door swings open, revealing Ray, speaking over his shoulder, "No one wants the place, because they all knew Frankie and they all know he died here. I thought about not renting it, but I could really use the money and it's weirder if it's empty now that Frank's passed….You're not weirded out?"

There was nothing more disheartening to prove that Frank no longer lived here than someone else moving in. Frank wonders how much time had actually passed, whether Ray had tried to rent the place for months, if it had just been a few days, if Ray had struggled with the idea of renting it to someone he didn't know.

"Ray?" Frank says, and it comes out slow and garbled. "Hello? Hello?"

The guy Ray was talking to just shrugs. He had weird bony cheekbones, messy greasy black hair, a giant messenger bag so full the top didn't stretch over it. "I bet someone's died in every apartment at some point. You just never know," he says. Ray looks mildly alarmed at this thought. Frank watches as Ray fidgets with the keys and the guy with the messenger bag opened up the closet door and peered inside. "So it's 600 a month," Ray finally says.

"Ok," the guy says, "I'll take it. I'm Gerard, by the way, I don't remember if I said." He smiles at Ray, all cheeks and bright teeth. "I'm sorry about your friend," Gerard adds, touching Ray for a moment on the arm. Gerard hesitates visibly for a moment before saying, "My grandmother passed away, just last month. Death's weird."

Death is weird, Frank thinks, though he suspects this is not the way it's really supposed to go.

Frank looks away for what feels like a moment, and Ray and Gerard are gone, before Frank could even decide to try and speak to them, before he could even do anything other than stand there dumbly and watch time pass in his apartment like scene changes in a play.

"I'm dead," Frank says. He'd figured as much, there weren't that many options when you were out of your body in the empty apartment that used to be yours, but he couldn't help that spark of hope that there was something else that was wrong, that this was just some out of body experience. Death was so irreversible, so permanent. It was supposed to be the end, and so it was kind of impossible for Frank to think about anything that happened after.

"I'm actually dead," he says again, because there isn't much else to say. Frank couldn't tell if he was making any sounds - it sounded to him like he was, but in a distorted sort of way, like he was shouting underwater. Frank knew he was short on actual reliable source material, since whatever he knew about ghosts came from movies and comic books, but he'd never really believed ghosts were real and yet here he was, one of them, and so he had to go with what he knew, however questionable and fictional the source.

He still thought it was a pretty good assumption that ghosts couldn't talk. They could sometimes move objects if they really concentrated, though Frank had no luck trying to pull out the telephone wire running against the baseboard. He couldn't walk through walls, either, though Frank only tried half-heartedly to walk through the wall between the hallway and the living room because he wasn't looking forward to the unpleasant feeling of banging his forehead. There weren't a lot of small objects left in the place so Frank tried to close a kitchen cabinet door to no avail. Like the light switch, he could feel it under his fingers but couldn't seem to make it move.

Frank tried to think of all the other things ghosts could and could not do, but his mind kept wandering into all the other things he knew about ghosts, which were mostly about why they happened. Grisly murders, vengeful spirits, people with unfinished business. Frank didn't think he had much to seek revenge against besides pneumonia, and man, if he could wrap his vengeful fingers around that nasty disease that caused him so much misery, he sure would. Frank didn't really think he had any unfinished business, either, nothing more specific than the fact that he didn't want to be dead.

He still kept hoping maybe he wasn't really dead, but the way Ray's voice had sounded when he'd told Gerard that Frank had died here made Frank realize suddenly very clearly that it was probably Ray who found him - found his body in the hallway, all of his groceries spilled around him - and Frank wants to go over there right now, go over to Ray's and tell him he's ok, and apologize for dying alone where his landlord had to find him.

But Frank stops with his toes at the front door, at the very edge. He can't open the door because he can't move it. Even if he could even get over to Ray's side of the house, what would he do, moan at him, blow some papers around, probably scare the fuck out of him? Frank didn't want to haunt Ray, he just wanted to say he was sorry.

Frank sees a beat-up sedan pull up in front of his house, and then Gerard gets out of the driver's seat and a skinny kid, all arms and legs and glasses, unfolds out of the passenger seat. Gerard bounds up the steps and peers into the window, right where Frank had been looking out. Frank jumps back, and he hears the jangle and click of keys in the door and then the door swings open, revealing Gerard, the wind blowing his messy hair back away from his face.

The lanky kid with glasses appeared behind Gerard a minute later, carrying a pillow. "Thanks, Mikey," Gerard says, and Mikey brushes past him, past Frank, and up the stairs.

The sunlight is unmistakably morning light, and little bits of snow are blowing in, right past Gerard's worn and scuffed sneakered foot that's holding open the door. Frank realizes, even though he's standing right by the door, right in the path of the draft, that he isn't cold at all.

Mikey comes flying back down the stairs, seemingly freer now without the heavy weight of the pillow slowing him down. He goes back to the sedan, and Gerard follows him. Frank notices his pale fingers, which he shoves into his pockets.

Mikey comes back up the front stairs carrying milk crates of comic books and one with an alarm clock perched on top of what might be boxes of cereal. Frank recognizes this for what it means - Gerard has probably never lived anywhere else but with his parents.

Gerard keeps getting waylaid in the open doorway, seemingly not bothered by the cold either, too occupied with taking the whole apartment in, as though composing the space in his head. There doesn't seem to be all that much in the sedan, at least from what Frank can see over the kid's shoulder. There has to be a moving van coming, or else Gerard doesn't own any furniture.

Frank remembers that, his first crappy apartment. He had a couch only because someone else left it behind. He had a couch in this place too; not very comfortable and pretty ugly. Gerard could have had it, since Frank didn't need it anymore, but it was gone and he didn't know where. Frank wondered if you had to burn furniture after someone had died of pneumonia. All he could think of was scarlet fever, and the Velveteen Rabbit. Maybe somewhere his couch was crying a real tear.

"Did you remember the Velveteen Rabbit?" Gerard asks Mikey, coming up behind him with another milk crate, and Frank shivers.

  
Gerard and Mikey finish unloading the car while Frank stays out of their way, lingering in the stairwell when they're downstairs or at the very back of the living room where Gerard is piling boxes - there really isn't much in it, Frank was right. Mikey shouts over and over and over, for him to give him the keys. "Gerard!" Mikey shouts one last time before Gerard finally hands over the keys. "I'm going to get pizza," Mikey says and Gerard's face lights up. "You remember that the next time you're cursing little brothers," Mikey says and then flips his hoodie up over his head and runs off toward the car.

"Get some Coke, too," Gerard says. "And not diet, ok?"

Gerard leaves the door open when he goes to pick up a few of the boxes that Mikey left on the curb. Frank is still thinking about going to see Ray, about getting away, about just trying to leave and seeing what happens, and so he walks toward the door. He's thinking, at least, of walking around the house, feeling what the outside feels like because Gerard's left the door open. Though he stops and thinks about what's going to happen if he gets to Ray's and the door is closed. Is he going to try to climb through a window? Can he make himself a vapor or something and blow through the mail slot? And if somehow he does get into Ray's house, how's he going to communicate? What happens if, on his way back, the door to his apartment - to Gerard's apartment - is shut? Is he going to stand on the porch waiting for someone to come by and open the door, Mikey with pizza, Gerard answering the door for the moving truck? It doesn't seem like he's going to get cold, but he'll certainly get bored, standing outside on the porch without even a cigarette to smoke.

Frank decides just to go for it while Gerard's bent over the boxes, but something weird happens. Frank walks into an invisible force field, or that's what it feels like, something strong and unseen that bounces him back from the door. He tries again, his hand on the door - he's bounced back to about the middle of the hallway. Frank stays there, in the hall, his elbows against the wall, as Gerard walks past him once, and then twice, bringing in the boxes, and then shuts the door. It isn't hard for Frank to figure out what's going on. He can't leave the house. He's stuck inside his old apartment, with someone else unpacking right in front of him.

Frank stands there, at the closed door, watching outside, trying to settle the panic, hoping desperately that some insight will come to him.

He stands there until Mikey returns with pizza, until the moving truck, which is more of a big van with just a few pieces of furniture arrives. Then Frank hides in the bathroom as the two movers try to maneuver Gerard's mattress up the stairs. Gerard seems more like the sort of person who would own a second-hand futon and not a real mattress, but there appears to be no bed frame or box spring. After that, Gerard directs the movers to drop off an old, ugly chair in the downstairs living room. Gerard looks fondly at it when they set it down, and then puts all of his weight behind it to shove it toward the window.

Frank feels better when he's watching Gerard and Mikey, it makes him feel less alone, less trapped in his head, less panicky. They're so normal, they're just starting to unpack, and Frank walks toward the living room to be closer. He thinks maybe he should let them be, give them some privacy, set some boundaries, or maybe try to ignore the idea that other people are now living in his apartment, try to figure out what's going on with him, but it's such an impossible puzzle, he's not sure what in the world he's supposed to do, and so he watches Mikey pull open the tops of boxes until he finds one of curtains, and then he goes to the kitchen and comes back with a chair under his arm. "From Mom," Mikey says, and shakes out a clean but yellowed lace curtain. "Lace, or lace?" Mikey says, showing Gerard the options.

"I need curtains?"

"This is a nice neighborhood, Gee, you need curtains."

Mikey stands on the stool and as Gerard pulls up a chair to start helping, he stops, his fingers on the lace of the curtain panel. "These were Elena's," Gerard says, and then twirls the material around his fingers.

Frank is captivated by the expression on Gerard's face, which is both wistful and sad. Frank takes a few steps closer and watches Gerard's eyes, which trace over the curtain in his hand, and then go somewhere unfocused and far away, and then come back to look at his brother.

"Yeah," Mikey says, and stops trying to hang them for a minute. "Is that – is that okay?" he asks, taking a step up the stool and putting the curtains on the rod before Gerard answers.

"Yeah," Gerard says. "She had good taste in curtains," and Mikey hides his smile in his sleeve.

Elena, Frank realizes, must have been their grandmother. He watches closely and he thinks he can see Gerard arrange the curtain Mikey has hung with a special attentiveness.

Frank drifts around the room as Mikey and Gerard unpack and talk, and so much of what's going on between them is like the secret language of brothers, of people who have known each other forever and Frank can't follow all of it.

Frank sees a shadow in the kitchen, something out of the corner of his eye, and he goes to investigate while Gerard asks Mikey if he knows which box has his clothes. Frank can't see anything that he thinks might have been the shadow, but he has a weird creepy feeling at the back of his neck, almost like a static charge. The longer he stays in the kitchen, the more normal it seems and the more relaxed he feels, so he thinks it's just freaking out. He isn't giving himself enough credit for keeping it together as well as he is. There's someone moving into his old apartment and he's a ghost and so it's ok if he thinks he sees things lurking in the shadows.

When he comes back into the living room, time has speeded up again, because most of the boxes have been rearranged and half-opened and a few of them are actually waiting to be broken down by the door, and Mikey has his coat on and is standing with his hand on the door.

Frank feels a rush of relief at the realization that it's just one person, that Mikey isn't living here, too, and Frank isn't sure why except that it doesn't feel as crowded. Just one person, and it's more like how Frank lived.

"So, I'll see you tomorrow," Mikey says. "I'll tell Mom you're all unpacked, ok?"

"Thanks," Gerard says, and then goes and hugs his brother. Mikey hugs him back hard, and then goes out the door.

"Hello," Gerard says, turning and walking back down the hall, and Frank startles, because there's no way Gerard can know he's here. Frank is just about to say a tentative hello back, but then it's clear from the way Gerard is walking around, his hands crossed in front of him, that Gerard's just greeting his apartment, and Frank feels a swell of tenderness for him. "Hello, so, I guess I live here now, so, uh, I hope I'm a good occupant." That seems to be all Gerard can manage and he lifts up a box and carries it upstairs and, after a long moment, Frank follows him up. It's as though there is a current tugging him toward Gerard and it's too hard to walk against it.

Gerard deposits the box in the bedroom, and after some rummaging around in a bag, is holding a pair of sweatpants and a t-shirt and a bright-blue towel in his hands. Gerard then flicks the light on and goes into the bathroom, tugging open the new shower curtain that Ray obviously put there. Gerard takes his shirt off in an awkward pull over his head, messing up his hair and catching his nose. Frank feels a rush of warmth as Gerard starts to unbutton his pants, and then stops and turns on the water of the shower before pulling his pants all the way down. Frank has a second to decide to follow Gerard all the way into the bathroom before Gerard closes the door, and Frank does it, steps in just as Gerard reaches forward and closes the door. He feels compelled against his better judgment, like there wasn't really a choice for him to make at all. Frank presses his back against the door, the towel hanging there on the back, and Gerard takes off his underwear, and Frank can't help but stare at his ass.

It's incredibly intimate in the small tiled bathroom, the steam starting to fill the room. Frank shouldn't be here, but he can't leave now, and he feels better in here, closer to Gerard, and Frank looks away from Gerard's ass, at least, when he steps over the side of the tub and pulls the transparent shower curtain behind him. Frank feels a strange kind of euphoria winding its way around him and he holds his arms close to his chest, trying to stop the need to reach out for Gerard, to step closer. He wants to see if he can touch the shower curtain, the feel of the towel under his fingers, the hot water. He can almost remember it all – he wants to get into the shower himself, but not alone, because Gerard's there, and what Frank wants more than anything is to be in there with Gerard. It's overwhelming, and scary now much he needs to be closer than he already is, with this guy he doesn't even know. His chest aches with it, and he breathes through the desperate waves of it, finally sitting on the floor with his back against the tile, his arms around his knees, and there are stray droplets of water falling as Gerard stands with his body under the stream of the water and Frank should be able to feel them, but he can't, and so he just imagines how warm they'd feel.

It's a really small room, Frank's never really thought about it, with the shower taking up most of the place. There's nowhere else for him to look but at the other person in the room. Frank tries, though, looks at the pattern of the tile, the fraying edge of the bath mat, the aged ceramic of the bathtub, the water beading on the curtain, the steam fogging up the mirror. And when he can no longer look away from Gerard, he looks at Gerard's calves, visible just above the edge of the tub, and then, because there's really nowhere else for Frank's eyes to go, he looks up at Gerard's silhouette, watches as Gerard dunks his head under the stream of water, rubs soap over his chest, over his ribs, his stomach, and Frank can't look away as Gerard reaches down and touches his cock. And, oh god, Frank thinks, oh god, he's totally not supposed to be in here right now, except that he can't actually look away, no matter how hard he tries. And he does actually try, because this is private, and no matter how much he likes Gerard, they're practically strangers.

Gerard is stroking his cock, his face falling forward into the stream of the water, then his head tilts back, streams of water running down his neck, and Frank just watches, like it's the most beautiful thing he's ever seen, and it feels like it may be, maybe it really is. All his guilt fades away, the strangeness and the ridiculous wrongness of the situation falls into the background in the exhilaration Frank feels. His body goes limp as Gerard's tenses, and it's blinding, it's ecstasy, as Gerard comes and Frank feels it course through him.

Frank lays there, spent, listening to the water fall in the shower, and as Gerard turns off the water and reaches for the towel, Frank doesn't move out of the way. He's desperate to find out what will happen if Gerard touches him, but Gerard's hand seems to bend around Frank, like reflected light. Frank can't feel a thing.

Frank scrambles to the door and when Gerard slips on his sweatpants and opens the door, Frank takes his opportunity to step out into the hallway and totally lose his shit. Because the euphoria has faded enough for Frank to feel guilty, and disgusted, and horrified, and panicky, because everything is completely wrong about this situation, there's nothing about it that's right. There's not a single goddamn thing that's ok or that makes sense. Except that when Gerard opens the door all the way, his t-shirt inside out and his hair a complete disaster, rubbing the towel over it and making it worse, Frank feels his panic subside. He feels everything get calm when he's looking at Gerard. He decides he needs to set some boundaries, like the bathroom is totally off limits from now on, and he really ought to try to look away anytime Gerard gets anywhere close to naked. He needs to learn to control himself, to resist the compulsion that's pulling him closer and closer to Gerard. This shower thing had just been a mistake, he couldn't have known what was going to happen. He felt better with those rules in place, at least. He'd just have to try to forget about what had just happened, what he had felt, no matter how amazing it was.

Downstairs, Gerard rummages through a few boxes, tearing out newspaper used as stuffing and Tupperware without lids and yanking back the cardboard flaps, ripping one. Frank still feels amazing, the afterglow like sex but better than he remembered. He wonders if it's being out of his body so long, maybe he doesn't really remember what sex feels like. But, Jesus, just watching Gerard like that, it's he didn't even have to – it's like he couldn't even touch himself, it was like Gerard was touching him. It was the best sex he'd ever had and all he'd been doing was watching Gerard through a shower curtain. He could only imagine what it would be like if – well, it's not like he could touch Gerard, but he wondered, maybe, if he tried –

Gerard swore as he tore through another box. He had coffee filters in his hand but, from what Frank could see, no coffee maker. After a few minutes, he found the coffee, but still not the coffee maker. He did, however, have a pot which he filled with water and put on the stove. He then rinsed out the glass he had drunk out of earlier, arranged the coffee filter meticulously, and then carefully poured in the boiling water. Frank was caught up in the artistry of it, as though Gerard were a master chef, and Frank couldn't help thinking his fondness, his attention to Gerard had something to do with the connection he felt, and that the connection opened him up in some way that felt new, shining, fresh, like a perfect morning, like Gerard's smile as throws the coffee filter away, sips his coffee, and sighs.

"You taught me how to do that," Gerard says to the room and Frank startles. He doesn't know how to brew coffee like that, and so Gerard can't possibly be talking to him, although who else, really, could be he talking to? Maybe Gerard knows he's there, now, after, but then what Gerard says next makes Frank realize he's not talking to Frank at all. "I miss you. And you, uh, probably can't hear me. It's just - I never talked to you enough while you were here, did I? So this is what I've got left." Gerard sighs, and Frank's heart breaks for him, for his sadness, for whoever he's talking to and lost, for who taught him how to make do brewing coffee with what he had at hand. "Goodnight," Gerard says, and takes his coffee to sit in his favorite in his chair. Frank can almost pretend that Gerard is talking to him.

  
It's not hard for Frank to remember that this really isn't his apartment anymore, not when everywhere he looks, someone else is living, someone else's things are all over the place. His apartment doesn't even seem to have the same shape, the way Gerard puts the kitchen table makes it look like a different kitchen. The curtains on the living room window make the light come in differently, and even the bedroom, where it's so small everything's in the same place, doesn't seem like Frankie's bedroom anymore, because Gerard is everywhere. His dirty clothes, the ashtray by the bed, the untied shoes, the trail of daily debris looks familiar, because Frank did the same thing, but enough like Gerard that it's clearly someone else's.

He watches Gerard like he's the only spot of light in a dark room. He watches Gerard getting up, showering, shaving, not showering, getting scruffy and shadow-eyed. Something weird happens when Gerard's asleep, though. Everything becomes like static on a TV screen, and hours pass in what seems like only a few minutes. The rest of the time, Frank is like Gerard's shadow, because he can't stay away.

When Gerard is gone, Frank gets lost trying to remember every detail of his morning routine, the things he didn't have to - couldn't - do now. Shaving, the smell of his shampoo. Laundry. The longer he thinks about his day in the term of tasks, of chores and routines, the more meaningless it feels. He wonders where his time went, what he really did with his days, what any of it meant.

For a long time Frank doesn't have any clue where Gerard goes when he leaves. He knows he must go to work, because mornings and some afternoons Gerard leaves the house at the same time. And he's not wearing sweat pants for torn flannel pajama pants, or torn jeans. He's not wearing anything Frank could consider a dress shirt, either, so he probably doesn't work in an office. A store, maybe, or some computer place where nerds behind the scenes can wear whatever they want because they don't interact with the public.

Gerard also doesn't have a television. Frank thinks it makes sense - he doesn't own one and doesn't have the money to buy one, though Gerard seems like the sort of person people give electronics too because they feel bad about his pathetic existence. Still, Gerard doesn't seem like the sort of guy who could afford a cable bill, either. Instead, when Gerard gets home from work, he calls Mikey, or he draws, or he falls asleep. That's really it. There isn't much room in that schedule for falling asleep in front of the TV, so it seems very Gerard that he's just left that part out.

Frank doesn't even miss television, really, not the way time works in his new ghost state. He doesn't miss any of the shows, and it's not like he has time to be bored when Gerard is there. Gerard is like a magnet, like a shiny object Frank can't seem to stay away from, not that he really feels like he's in control of himself that much anyway. When Gerard is there, Frank has to watch him, has to follow him around, has to be aware of where Gerard is, what he's doing, what he might be thinking. Frank would feel like a creepy stalker if he had any control over it, but he doesn't. And so he watches Gerard like he's television, like he's the best television Frank has ever seen.

He especially likes to watch Gerard draw. Gerard sometimes draws in bed, with the sketchbook balanced on his knees and uncapped markers staining the sheets blotchy reds and blacks. Or Gerard will sit on the floor with his sketchpad on the carpet and hunch over it, like he's trying to light a cigarette in the rain. He'll push his lanky hair out of his face, and it will fall right back, and Frank wants to walk over there with a pair of scissors and cut it all away, so Gerard can have his hands free, so Frank can see Gerard's eyes. And there is a moment, every single time when Gerard draws, where Frank watches him let go. Sometimes it's only for a second, and sometimes it lasts for twenty minutes, until Gerard finishes something, some corner or sketch, and looks up into the room, blinking, unsure where he is.

Every day, when he's done making coffee, burning grilled cheese, and talking to Mikey on the phone, Gerard sits in front of the window with the best light and sketches, long wild pencil marks that reveal themselves to be monsters or zombies or the tree in the neighbors yard. He's good, too, not in the way that Frank expected, the kind of average doodles he'd seen his friends do when they think they're artists. Gerard knows the shapes of things, and where their shadows fall.

One day, after Frank clings to Gerard's presence as he made a peanut butter sandwich until the strange, heavy feeling of treading water fades and he sits on the floor, his legs crossed, looking at Gerard draped over the ratty, slightly smelly arm chair with an afghan over his legs like he's a cripple, a charcoal pencil making soothing, scratching noises on the paper. Frank closes his eyes and listens to the sound and it's louder somehow than Frank feels like he's ever heard sound, clearer, like Gerard's pencil is the only thing in the whole room making noise besides their breathing and the beating of their hearts. Or Gerard's heart. Frank thinks his probably isn't making noise anymore. Frank listens hard, and when he opens his eyes, he sees that Gerard has drawn Frank's face. It's unmistakably him, with his stupid crooked smile, his round face, his hair even looks exactly right.

Frank keeps looking at Gerard, at the drawing, at Gerard again, wondering how Gerard could possibly know what he looks like. It gives him hope that Gerard will actually figure out he's here, that there's some chance that Gerard actually knows he's here, subconsciously, and that it's only a matter of time before Gerard figures it out, because the connection can't just be one-sided. Frank's sure of it now. Gerard can help Frank, can save him from this limbo. Gerard can bring him back. Gerard regards the drawing curiously, like he's a little surprised himself, and then he starts to fill in the shape of Frank's eyes with short little pencil strokes.

  
The next morning, he thinks he should remind Gerard that he should take out the trash, because that's the sort of thing you never remember about moving in to a new place. But Gerard, who fell asleep on the armchair, has pen on his hands and his face, paper lines and sweatshirt lines crinkled all over the right side of his face and his neck, is already grabbing the trash bag and tying it up. Gerard didn't always sleep in his bed. Sometimes he'll be there, comic books and half-eaten Pillsbury cinnamon rolls on dirty plates, ash and pencil shavings and one sock and three shirts and a figure-drawing book under his pillow in a way that would be terrible to lay down on. But just as often he falls asleep downstairs, in the armchair.

Gerard hesitates at the door, deciding to zip his jacket and then turning around to search the floor for an umbrella and Frank stands at the door, wishing he could feel the wind and the rain, or smell the wet leaves and the wet pavement. He imagines getting into Gerard's car, the air humid and chilly, and Gerard turning on the radio - he'd watch Gerard's hands on the wheel, the curve of Gerard's shoulders as he checked the intersection, the skin of his neck as he turned to look behind him before pulling out of the driveway. Frank wants to climb inside the idea, inside Gerard's car, inside Gerard's morning. He wants to sing along to the radio with Gerard, steal sips of his coffee, smooth his hand down Gerard's shirtsleeve. He wants Gerard to turn to him and smile that goofy, all-teeth smile. He wants Gerard to say his name.

Frank listens to the rain and sighs. He wants a cup of tea, like his mother used to make him while he was sick, and like he'd make himself when it got really bad but before he went into the hospital. He thinks maybe he should have never moved out of his house, or he should have gotten a roommate, but Frank liked being alone, and, he thinks, he could have died while his roommate was out. Frank thinks he's being morbid, thinking about dead bodies lying around in the hallway, even if it's his own body, and so instead he thinks about tea again, orange-y and bitter. He wants to watch Gerard drink a cup of tea this very moment. He thinks of Gerard's lips on the cup, of Gerard's throat swallowing each sip.

Gerard's found an umbrella, and Frank watches, broken-hearted, as Gerard steps out into the morning, like Frank's a dog left home alone, waiting only for his master to return and barking at passersby who dare disturb his vigil.

When Gerard leaves is when time gets the weirdest. Frank can watch from the windows the activities of the neighbors, he can watch them get into their cars and drive off, walk the dog, jog behind a baby carriage, bring home bags of groceries into their warm kitchens, but he can't do anything until Gerard gets home. He can't seem to stay put. His mind, his attention, his awareness of space just sort of drift away like he's not grounded without Gerard, like he has no context for anything and can't have his own thoughts, like he fades away the longer Gerard is gone, and rushes back as soon as Gerard opens the door, his hands full of comic books, mail, a jug of milk. Frank feels it like the sun coming out, like the heat coming on. He's not sure if it's because it's Gerard or just being near someone, but Frank's never really sure where the days go - where he goes - when Gerard is gone.

Frank doesn't like being alone. He's too alone. He realizes that when he thought he was on his own, when he was alive, he was actually just spending time by himself when his world was filled with people he could call at any moment. It hadn't always been that way, but it had somehow become his life, too tired to return phone calls, too sick to be anyone's friend. Now there's only Gerard, only the neighbors, and none of them see Frank, he only watches them, pretending he's a part of their lives when they don't even know he exists.

Frank wonders if Gerard is lonely. He wonders if Gerard says things like Frank used to, that it's easier to be alone, that it's better to have his own schedule, keep his own hours, keep his space the way he wants it. He knows those things don't mean you can't have friends, but friends can just be people you end up disappointing, who turn out not to like you when they get to know your real self, especially when that real self is prickly, solitary, morose and sometimes dark. Frank can't help but understand if that's the way Gerard feels about friends, if it's just easier not to bother to reach out to people. Gerard at least has Mikey, and they are close and Frank envies that, because siblings kind of have to stick with you, no matter what kind of an asshole you are. Frank wonders maybe if Gerard's solitary nature is just accidental, if he wouldn't prosper with someone to make sure he leaves the house dressed for the rain so he won't come back soaked, that he remembers his gloves so that his fingers aren't practically blue when he opens the door. Someone to wake up next to him in the morning, share coffee and a cigarette. Someone who is more than a friend. And it's easy for Frank, Gerard's constant shadow, to consider how good he would be at all of those things, how easy it would be to care for Gerard. Frank would be really, really good at being Gerard's more-than-a-friend.

  
It's a few weeks after Gerard moves in that Frank notices that the door to the basement keeps popping open. Gerard doesn't seem to notice, or if he does, it doesn't seem to bother him that he has to keep closing it a couple of times a day. Frank would think it was just the heat, the furnace coming on, wood expanding and all that, except that it never happened when he lived here, and it feels like everything goes quiet for a second right before it happens. It starts happening to Gerard's bedroom door, and the bathroom door, and then Frank can tell that Gerard actually notices it, because he'll sort of pause for a second before closing the door, stand with his hand almost touching the handle, like he is waiting for it to reopen. It seems, though, that Gerard just considers it a quirk of the house, because he'll shake his head slightly and then go back to whatever it was he was doing.

Once Frank starts noticing it, he can't stop. He wonders if it was something to do with focusing so much of his attention on Gerard – he notices the things that are only on Gerard's periphery.

Frank notices, too, that Gerard seems cold a lot, and even though it's winter, Gerard seems to have the heat set pretty high. Frank remembers wearing fingerless gloves himself on some mornings when the place was chilly, but not like this, Gerard starting out in a t-shirt and then being struck by a sudden bout of shivering, where he runs upstairs and grabs a hoodie, pulls his hands into the sleeves and the hood over his head - and then a few minutes later sitting down in another part of the house, rolling his sleeves up, finally taking the hoodie off again. Frank worries that maybe Gerard has a cold, is having hot and cold flashes, that he's going to get pneumonia like Frank, and Frank wonders if there are germs lingering, if anyone scrubbed the place down, and he pictures Ray here, with gloves and a surgeon's mask, scrubbing the hallway down with Lysol.

Frank pays even closer attention, watching Gerard for other signs of illness, of a fever, and he realizes the cold comes from certain spots in the house - drafts, Frank thinks at first, maybe the heat isn't working properly or maybe Gerard just gets colder than Frank, who always ran kind of hot even when he wasn't sick.

Gerard comes out of the bedroom, half-dressed and ready for work and Frank let his gaze linger a little longer than really polite on Gerard's back, the way his half-buttoned pants show the small of his back as he bends over the put on his socks. Gerard shivers suddenly, and breaks out all over in goose bumps, and Frank thinks maybe he was the one to make it happen, ghosts were supposed to cause cold spots after all, but Frank isn't sure why. He wracks his brain for every movie or comic it had appeared in – was it the presence of the ghost that made things cold? Was it some area around where they were? Frank can not think of a single time that it was a ghost looking at you that made you break out in shivers like someone was blowing icy cold breath across your back. Gerard reaches for his shirt, pulls it over his head, but seems unconvinced that the cold was entirely just from being shirtless. He looks up at the ceiling, holds his hand out as he approaches the baseboard heater and then checks the thermostat.

It happens again when Mikey is visiting, making nachos under the broiler while Gerard picks at pieces of shredded cheese from the bag.

"You could move in here, you know, Mikey," Gerard says thoughtfully. "It's big and I don't really own that much stuff."

Frank hates the idea immediately, and he's hit with a sudden rush of jealousy even though he actually likes Mikey. It's completely irrational, he knows, since it's not like he actually lives with Gerard. Gerard doesn't actually know Frank is here, but the idea of sharing this place with someone else other than Gerard makes him furious.

"Yeah, like Mom would let me," Mikey says. "Anyway, you can't cook and she can." Mikey stands up suddenly and rubs his arms. "Also, she turns on the heat."

"I have the heat on," Gerard says immediately. "But I think there's something weird with it, there are all these cold spots."

"You know what cold spots mean," Mikey says, holding his hands over the oven door and rubbing them together.

"HVAC problems?" Gerard says.

"Ghosts," Mikey rubs his hands faster. "You know, you could get me a sweatshirt."

Gerard does get Mikey a hoodie, which Mikey sniffs first. It isn't a bad idea since Frank hasn't seen Gerard do more than a few loads of laundry, and then Mikey reluctantly puts it on while Gerard makes a pot of coffee.

"How's Mom?" Gerard asks when the coffee's done, turning to a blank page of his drawing pad and starting to sketch.

"You should call her," Mikey answers.

"I did, just two days ago!" Gerard protests. "I mean, how is she, with, you know."

Frank wishes he could sit at the table, could grab Gerard's hand and squeeze, because he knows Gerard's talking about his grandmother.

"She's worried about you, actually," Mikey says. "More than normal, I mean. You did move out just after she'd cleaned out Elena's room."

"It wasn't that," Gerard says.

"But it was about her, wasn't it? It was about her being gone."

"It just wasn't the same," Gerard says quietly. "And it was time for me to move out anyway."

Mikey nods, but he still looks concerned. "I miss her," Mikey says, and Gerard gets up, seemingly to refill his coffee cup, but when he turns his back and gets the milk out of the fridge, Frank can see that Gerard's eyes are teary when he says, "Me too."

  
Frank runs for the door when Gerard gets home, desperate to see him like he is every day after the weird, nowhere place he goes when Gerard is gone, the timeless, never-ending place where it's just him and the empty house. Gerard is fumbling with his keys, taking his jacket off, toeing off his sneakers and kicking them over to the radiator. He hangs up his jacket on the coat hook and then greets the house, silently, now, but Frank recognizes the gesture, and wonders where Gerard picked it up. It seems just deliberate enough, not quite natural. Frank thinks it seems like a gesture of remembrance, and then he knows instantly and without a doubt that it must have been something Gerard's grandmother did, and Gerard, greeting his new apartment, was thinking of her every time he did it.

Gerard measures out coffee for the coffee maker and turns it on, and while it sputters to a start, Gerard digs something out of his bag. Frank realizes it's a photocopied piece of paper, and Gerard slips it under a magnet on the fridge. Frank gets close to see it and then stops short of reaching for the paper, forgetting for a moment he can't touch it. Because it's a photocopy of his obituary, and Frank scans the next without really seeing it.

Frank retreats back to the doorway, thinking about whether it means something that he feels more comfortable in doorways, the possibility of a choice to go in our out. It's easier to think about than his obituary, which Gerard straightens on the fridge, eyes lingering on it as he skims over the text. Frank's looking everywhere but at the obituary, and he's looking right at the kitchen light when it start to flicker. It looks at first like a bad light bulb, and Gerard cranes his neck to check whether the light is about to go out, but then the hallway light starts to flicker, too, and the lamp in the living room. Gerard gets up on a kitchen chair and reaches up slowly to tap the glass of the kitchen light, and just before he makes contact, the light goes out. Frank gasps, but Gerard seems unphased. He continues his path toward the light, tapping on the glass. When it doesn't come back on, he turns the switch off, turns it back on. He steps out into the hallway, whose light flickers and goes out. Gerard flicks the hallway switch to no avail, and the rummages around in the box nearest the closet where he finds a box of light bulbs. Gerard replaces both the one in the kitchen and in the hallway, and flicks the switches a few times, but nothing happens, and then, just as Gerard throws the old light bulbs in the trash, both lights come on. Gerard looks pleased, but Frank can't help but feel unsettled by the whole thing.

  
Gerard calls Ray about it the next day, apologizing as if the weird hot and cold issues with the heating and the flickering lights in the apartment were his fault, a mess he got himself into and now Ray was the only one who can fix it. Ray comes over after dinner the same night Gerard calls, and Gerard is washing dishes with his hood up over his head, the steam from the hot water in the sink making his face and fingers pink.

Ray knocks and Gerard grabs the towel and half-heartedly dries his hands as he goes to answer the door. "Ray!" Gerard says, like it's a surprise that Ray is here, and a good one. "You can just come in, man, this place is actually yours, I'm just living here."

Ray looks both warmed by the offer and a little hesitant. "Thanks," he says eventually, and there's a real smile on his face and Frank feels a pang, because he lived next door to Ray for a couple of years and he's sure he never once said anything to Ray that made Ray smile.

Frank had forgotten what Ray looked like, what Ray sounded like, what it meant for a landlord to come in, someone who used to be his friend. He didn't want to forget, but it seemed the more time passed since his regular life, the less he remembered, and not in a wholly normal way. He remembered phone numbers and random things, like Ray up on the top of the stairs shouting down when he was a kid, and his mother making chocolate chip pancakes, but he was feeling more and more disconnected. He'd look at Gerard's calendar and not understand it, even though he knew he was supposed to. He'd hear the phone ring and think it was someone calling for him and forget that he couldn't move the same way, couldn't answer it, couldn't make his voice work even if he tried.

He has to spend more time closer to Gerard, looking right over his shoulder, being in the same room, and even then, Frank can tell it isn't the same as it was before. He isn't as strong. He wonders whether or not his time is up, if he had, in fact, been given a certain amount of time. He isn't sure what he was supposed to do with it, but he figures he isn't doing it right, and the place he is supposed to be is taking him, slowly, piece by piece.

Gerard starts telling Ray about the drafts, about how they're not always in the same place and how he checked the windows and everything, checked the heat and it's coming out of all the old radiators. Gerard diverges for a while talking about which radiator is his favorite - the one in the hall right by the front door, because he puts his snowy gloves on it and his shoes under it, and the snow and the frost all melts away - until Gerard wonders aloud if it was something that always happened with this place.

"If it happened while Frank was living here, I didn't hear about it," Ray says, a little sadly. "He didn't call for much." It hangs in the air, that Frank didn't even call for help when he was sick, and Frank had never wanted to bother anyone, especially not Ray who was nice and seemed busy a lot and probably didn't want to help a sick kid get groceries, or remind him when he should actually go see the doctor. He'd never realized Ray had noticed how Frank avoided asking for help, and felt rebuffed, and guilty, because Frank going it alone had ended up with him dead.

"What was he like?" Gerard asks. "Did you know him well?"

Ray gives a small smile and shrugs. "I guess. Our families knew each other, and he rented from me for a few years." Ray shoves his hands in his pockets. "Frank was kind of a hard guy to get close to. Liked to keep to himself."

Gerard nods thoughtfully. "I'm sorry he died," Gerard says, and Frank wants nothing more to than to slip his hand in Gerard's, press his mouth to Gerard's shoulder, feel his heart beating.

Ray opens his toolbox and says, "Ok, let's see if we can't figure out what's going on with this heat."

Ray's down in the basement for maybe twenty minutes, and he comes up again with a few gadgets in his hands and starts pointing various ones at the vents. Gerard's drawing at the kitchen table, and his sketching slows and eventually he puts his pencil down and watches Ray.

"How'd you learn how to do that?" Gerard asks and Ray laughs.

"This? This is just holding a thermometer up to the vent," Ray says.

"I mean, all of this." Gerard gestures to the apartment.

Ray adjusts a knob on the gadget. "I learned because I was the one who had to fix things, and it was cheaper than calling a handyman."

"So you became one," Gerard says, impressed. "I don't think I can fix anything."

"Well, I can't teach you how to fix the heat, since I don't know what's wrong with it," Ray says, "But the next time something breaks, let me know and I'll show you how."

Gerard beams at him. Frank wonders why he never managed to have a conversation with Ray like this, and at the same time feels a twinge of jealousy that Ray and Gerard are hitting it off. He's distracted, though, when the kitchen light starts to flicker again.

"Does it need a new bulb?" Ray asks. "You know how to change a light bulb, right?"

"I do!" Gerard says proudly. "I just replaced that one yesterday."

Ray laughs, and reaches out and taps the kitchen fixture. It flickers faster, and then the hallway starts.

"My brother says I have a ghost," Gerard says, making a joke. The flickering stops.

Ray laughs, and then asks, obviously concerned that he's offended Gerard, "You don't believe in ghosts, do you?"

Gerard shrugs. "I don't know," he says. "I mean, maybe they exist." He trails off, looking out into the distance, as though he's looking for a ghost. Frank wants to find a way to show Gerard that he exists, that ghosts are real, but he can't think of a thing to do, and he's still concerned about the way the lights keep flickering, about the cold spots and the shadow he keeps seeing out of the corner of his eye, and he thinks maybe showing Gerard that ghosts exist can happen later, once he figures out what's going on.

"I'll go check the circuits downstairs," Ray says. "You know where the breaker box is? Come on, I'll show you."

"Ok, I'll be right down," Gerard says, and as soon as Ray's down the stairs, Gerard says, quietly, "If you're really a ghost, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to hurt your feelings by not believing in you."

Gerard follows Ray down the stairs, and closes the door before Frank can follow him, and Frank stands at the door the whole time Gerard and Ray are down there, waiting.

  
Ray decides that there are loose wires, maybe, and he tells Gerard he'll call a real electrician in to check on it at the end of the week. The cold spots seem to lessen a little bit, or Gerard doesn't seem to notice them as much, and Frank wishes he could feel the cold so he could know whether it was the heating system or something else, something that had nothing to do with the heat. And then there's one day when Gerard breaks three glasses. He seems as surprised as Frank is when it happens, each time. And each time it's not clear whether Gerard brushed past them and they fell or he was clumsy somehow, but by the second one, Gerard curses aloud and Frank gets the feeling that Gerard can't have developed a new sort of clumsiness. Frank actually sees the third glass break, and although Gerard's standing right near the table where the glass full of water is, he's not actually touching it when it slides off the end of the table and breaks. Frank thinks he can see something move off out of the room, and he thinks of the shadow he saw when Gerard first moved in, and he follows it out into the hallway, but there's nothing there.

Mikey knocks and then opens the door as Gerard is Gerard is gathering some of the larger shards of glass carefully in the palm of his hand and throwing them away.

"What happened?" Mikey asks, and Gerard explains. Frank is actually glad Mikey is there, because Mikey listens to Gerard's story of the mysterious and inexplicable clumsiness, and gets out his computer out of his bag and sets it up on the kitchen table.

Mikey drums his fingers on the table, scrolls down a page on the computer, drums his fingers again. Frank tries to read over Mikey's shoulder, but he can't seem to get close to Mikey for some reason, not the same way he can get right next to Gerard. It feels a lot like the feeling Frank has when he tries to step out the front door. He doesn't feel the same pull to be close to Mikey the way he does to Gerard and so he wonders if that's why the closer he gets to Mikey, the more Mikey seems foggy around the edges, like he's not quite in focus.

"So," Mikey says, and Gerard pauses for a second, then continues bending down to pick up another shard of glass, "I think you have a ghost."

Frank wants to laugh, because, yeah, Mikey sure has this one nailed. Gerard, however, looks skeptical, which hurts Frank's feelings. "Come on, Gee, how do you explain all the weird stuff that's happening to you?"

"What weird stuff?"

"You had, like, a dozen cold spots all over your apartment. And the glasses? You're not Mr. Graceful or anything, but who breaks three glasses in a row and is not even sure he was touching them?"

"Maybe I have a problem with my inner ear!"

Mikey just makes a disgusted snort. Gerard sits down with his sketch pad as Mikey turns his attention back to the computer. Frank keeps checking the hall where he thought he saw the shadow, turning quick, hoping to catch it full on, but never seeing anything that wasn't just the shadow of the tree out front or the reflection of a car passing by disrupting the light.

"Did you get an aquarium?" Mikey asks, and Gerard looks up at Mikey, frowning.

"Was I supposed to?" Gerard asks, sounding almost worried.

"No, it just says that sometimes people have aquariums and they make it seem like their house is haunted. Weird sounds and lights and stuff."

"I didn't get an aquarium," Gerard says.

"And Ray couldn't find anything about the heat?"

"He said it was fixed!" Gerard says.

"But there are still cold spots?"

"No," Gerard says, and then at Mikey's disbelieving stare, adds, "Well, I don't know, I'm not really sure."

Mikey's eyes fall on Gerard's sketchbook, and as soon as Gerard notices, he tries to close the cover, but Mikey grabs it away from Gerard and flips a few pages.

Mikey is looking at the drawing of Frank. "Who's this?"

Gerard shrugs. "Just some guy I had in my head. Probably say him on the bus or at work or something." Mikey flips through the pages and Gerard protests, yanks the sketchbook back from Mikey's hands. Frank sees that there are pages filled with drawings of him.

"You've drawn him, like, 18 times, Gee, what the fuck." Mikey pauses. "Is this the guy who used to live here?"

Gerard sighs, exasperated. "I just....can't stop thinking about him."

"Is this about Elena?" Mikey asks.

"What? No," Gerard says. "It's not the same thing."

Mikey stills looks concerned. "You're just acting strange," he says.

"You're the one who brought up ghosts!" Gerard shoots back, and then apologizes. "Really, Mikey, I'm fine. It's just something that's been on my mind since I moved here. You'd feel the same if you moved in here. I think it's respectful, to think about him. This guy died here, Mikey, all alone. At least she had us."

  
It gets old pretty fast, not being able to talk to Gerard, or communicate with him in any way. It's pretty quiet in the house alone when one of the people living there thinks he's alone. Gerard doesn't talk to himself nearly enough to satisfy Frank's need for sound. He just walks around, thinking thoughts inside his head that Frank can't understand. He studies Gerard's expression, his body language, gets pretty good at knowing what that certain frown means, when Gerard's hungry before he gets up to get food, but it's still not the same as talking and just when Frank thinks he might go out of his mind with not hearing anything, with not hearing Gerard say words with his voice, Mikey calls, or Gerard will answer the door and chat with the delivery guy, or Ray will stop by.

But it's been a long weekend and there's been no mail, no packages, and Mikey's gone, Frank remembers Gerard saying something about having a good time in the city. Gerard hasn't spoken a word in three days and Frank is going completely insane with the lack of sound. He's tried to talk himself, but it doesn't do any good, and Gerard can't hear him, can't answer back. Frank stands in the stairwell and shakes his fists, stomps his feet. Shouts out Gerard's name. There's no sound. Gerard doesn't answer.

Finally, finally, there's at least bed, where Gerard can't be expected to speak, where Frank can sit in the corner of the room and relax into the quiet. Frank's gotten into the habit of watching Gerard sleep, because it's the closet thing he gets to rest, watching Gerard's face relax against the pillow, watching him sprawl out, his mouth open, the sheets bunching around his knees. And if Frank thinks about Gerard, thinks about Gerard's body, about the sounds he would make, if Frank thinks about what it would be like to touch Gerard like this, open and undone, if Frank thinks about kissing Gerard breathless, if he thinks about it every night as he watches Gerard lie down, adjust his pillow, close his eyes and drift off, then Frank can't really be blamed. What else is he supposed to think about with Gerard like this, half naked, disarmed, not moving or fidgeting, all of Gerard's body laid out before him? And maybe it's creepy, but Frank doesn't really have a choice here - everything he does is creepy here, silently watching Gerard all of the time.

Frank sits down on the pile of blankets in the corner and wishes he could curl up in them, wrap one of them around his shoulders, let his eyes fall closed the way Gerard's are right now, letting go of the concerns of the day for the weird, strange time of whatever happens during sleep, rest and dreams. He wishes, at least, that Gerard would say goodnight, would speak just that one word aloud to the house. He closes his eyes, wishing for it, straining his ears in case Gerard whispers it, in case it comes out on an exhale the very second before he's asleep.

"Hi," Gerard says and Frank's eyes fly open. They're standing in a different room - a kitchen somewhere that Frank doesn't recognize. Gerard is wearing the same flannel pajama shorts and overly large, randomly stained grey t-shirt that he fell asleep in.

"Hi," Frank says, because Gerard is looking at him, waiting for an answer.

"Aren't your feet cold?" Gerard asks, and Frank looks down and his feet are bare. He hasn't been aware of his shoes, his clothes, for some time now, but he feels his bare feet on the linoleum floor, his t-shirt under a sweater vest that he was just about to think about throwing out for good before he died wearing it, jeans that fit perfectly and could have lasted a few years except for the possible pneumonia contagion or whatever. But here he was, wearing them.

He shoves his hands in his pockets and says, "No, I'm ok. It's good to feel them again."

"Can you see Elena, where you are?" Gerard asks. Frank doesn't want to have to tell Gerard that he can't, doesn't want to see the disappointment on his face.

Finally, he shakes his head no. "She's not here," Frank says, his voice heavy with apology. "There's just me."

"But why are you all alone?" Gerard reaches out to touch Frank, his fingers just resting on Frank's arm.

The moment Frank realizes it's a dream is the moment he's no longer in it. It has to have been Gerard's dream, because Frank doesn't dream, can't even sleep, and Gerard is still asleep. He feels like everything is sharp and bright, like he can see everything clearly for the first time since the day Gerard moved in. He stirs slightly when Frank gets up and leans close, peers into Gerard's face and wonders what in the world just happened.

  
Mikey comes by the next morning, and the first words out of his mouth are that he's sorry he brought up ghosts. "I didn't mean to freak you out or anything, or make it seem like I was being disrespectful to the guy who died here," Mikey says all in a rush.

Gerard looks serene, has all morning since after the dream, and Frank understands why as soon as Gerard answers Mikey. "No, it's ok, Mikey, I've thought about it and think you're right. I think I do have a ghost, and I think it's Frank."

Mikey's face goes blank, but Frank's heart explodes with happiness because Gerard knows he's here.

"Look, you're the one who said I had a ghost, and now I tell you the thing that makes the most sense, that it's the ghost of the previous resident and you get all judgmental."

Mikey just shakes his head. "Ok, maybe it's this guy. Frank."

Gerard's expression has stretched into a tight frown. "So, Mikey, tell me everything you know about ghosts. What am I supposed to do?"

"You're supposed to help me," Frank says, without really meaning to say it aloud.

"I know I'm supposed to help him," Gerard says an instant later. "Help him move on or whatever but - " there's a long pause, "what if he doesn't want to move on?" Gerard says and he sounds really concerned. "What if he wants to stay?"

"I do," Frank says, "I do want to stay," but he's not even sure what that means anymore. He doesn't want to stay stuck in this house, like this, incorporeal, powerless, unable to even step outside, or smoke a cigarette, or eat anything ever again. But he knows he doesn't want to leave Gerard, can't even bear to think about it.

"I just think – "Mikey says, and then the kitchen lights start to flicker. Then, with a bang, the basement door, the door to the coat closet, and the front door fly open. Mikey shouts, and a gust of wind too large to come from the outside blows a pile of Gerard's mail left by the door, and then two pairs of shoes right up into the kitchen. Gerard rushes forward and has to put all of his weight against the front door to make it shut. The wind stops. Frank looks the whole time for the shadow, for some explanation, but he's fixated on how shocked Gerard looks.

"Ok, you really have a ghost," Mikey says, once Gerard picks up the mail, the shoes, and shuts the closet and the basement door.

  
Mikey pries open the silver pourer on the 2 lb cardboard canister of salt and starts pouring it in a steady stream across the inside of Gerard's doorway. Small granules of salt scatter all over the floorboards and under - or through - Frank's feet.

"What are you doing?" Gerard exclaims, but Mikey doesn't stop to look up at his brother until there's a carefully poured line of salt across the front doorway.

"Protection," Mikey says. "Salt stops evil spirits from crossing the threshold."

"The ghost is inside my house, it's not like it's going to cross any thresholds, it's already here." Gerard stands with his legs splayed wide and his hands on his hips, like he's trying to take up more space than his brother.

"This is only the first door," Mikey says. "I'm going to do them all."

"Mikey, Mikey, cut it out, you're making a mess," Gerard says, sounding more and more annoyed. "Plus, didn't Mom teach you that spilling salt was bad luck?"

"I'm not spilling it, I'm pouring it, and salt is a very strong protection."

"I don't need protecting!" Gerard says again. "The ghost isn't going to hurt me."

Frank feels a swell of warmth that Gerard knows Frank isn't there to hurt him. Mikey continues to pour salt across the threshold of the coat closet.

And then Frank gets curious, because what if Mikey's right, and salt is going to protect Gerard from ghosts, which means something will happen to Frank when he tries to go across the door, from one way or another. Normal people went through doors, and Frank still thinks he's more normal than anything. What if he's not, though, and what if the salt really can hurt him. He imagines dissolving like the Wicked Witch of the West, or getting burned. Frank wonders if it can get through his sneakers, but then he remembers that his sneakers aren't really real.

He tries it, stepping over the salt line as soon as Mikey pours it across the entrance to the living room. Nothing happens. He's fine.

"You've got to be careful," Mikey says. "Spirits are dangerous."

"Frank's not a spirit, he's a ghost," Gerard says, and Frank feels dumb with happiness at Gerard saying his name.

"Let's not use his name," Mikey says nervously. "What if it's not him?"

"No, no," Gerard says quickly, running over his brother's words. "I just....." Gerard waves his hands above his chest, like, Frank thinks, that he's about to put his hand to his heart. "Know," he finishes quietly.

"You're scaring me, Gerard," Mikey says.

"I'm sorry, but I just, I know this," Gerard insists.

It's like a jolt of energy every time Gerard says Frank's name. Gerard knows Frank is here. And he doesn't want to hurt him, with salt or anything else.

Mikey insists the best course of action is research, Frank thinks also because he's still trying to disprove Gerard's insistence that the ghost is Frank, and he spends the rest of the afternoon with his nose to the screen of his laptop, calling out random facts from sites that tell you how to determine whether or not you have a ghost, and periodically checking on the salt lines.

"What is it that you're checking for," Gerard asks finally, after the fourth time Mikey gets up and makes a circuit around the house.

"Whether or not any of them are broken," Mikey says like it's obvious. Frank walks over another one of the lines to stand in the kitchen with them and it doesn't break.

"And that will tell us we have a ghost?" Gerard asks.

"It will tell us something," is all Mikey says.

Gerard maintains an air of indulging Mikey, though Frank catches him peeking at the salt lines in the hallway.

"How do you know all this, anyway?" Gerard asks Mikey, while Mikey scrolls and clicks through pages with pictures of abandoned houses and pictures of orbs that look like blurry Christmas lights.

"I went ghost hunting with Pete," Mikey says without looking away from the screen.

"You went into an abandoned house with Pete?" Gerard's whole body posture changes, and he looks torn between being furious and scolding.

"Pete's not like you think he is," Mikey says, and there's something in his eyes that Frank can't read, something like delight.

"I never expected him to take my little brother on one of his insane ghost hunts."

"We went after work with Schechter," Mikey says, like it explains it all, and Gerard just shakes his head.

"Pete and Schechter are two different conversations," Gerard says, "Just because he's your boss doesn't mean you should go with him and Pete on a midnight ghost hunt." He cocks his head when he notices it sounds as if there's a tea kettle whistling, and Gerard actually looks at the stove before he realizes the sound isn't actually a normal household sound. It gets louder, eerier, makes Frank's ears ache, makes him close his eyes with the change in pressure in the air. When he opens them again, blinking, Gerard has yanked Mikey up from the kitchen chair and pulled him to the very corner of the kitchen, away from the hallway where the sound seems to be coming from.

Frank tries to take a step forward to look into the hallway, see what's making the horrible, earsplitting noise, but he can't seem to move forward, like he's walking against the wind except he can't feel any wind, just the resistance, pushing against his chest. He feels drained the longer he fights it, and so he steps back, moving closer to Gerard. The sound suddenly stops, but Frank's ears are still ringing, and so, it seems, are Gerard and Mikey's. Gerard's eyes are wide. Mikey pulls away from where Gerard has his hand on his arm and runs out into the hallway. He stops, and sighs, and then turns and waves Gerard forward.

Gerard goes hesitantly, and Frank follows. The hallway is covered in a fine dusting of salt. Every single one of the salt lines is gone, scattered all across the floor.

"You think ghost hunts are insane now?" Mikey says. "I'm calling Schechter."

Gerard only nods, and then says, after a swallow, says weakly, "For Christ's sake, don't let him bring Wentz."

  
Mikey calls Schechter and as much as Frank tries, he can't really hear the conversation. No matter how curious he is about what Mikey's saying, he's compelled to watch Gerard, even if the only thing he's going is sweeping up the salt that's blown everywhere, down on his knees with a dust pan.

Mikey hangs up and says, "He'll be over Friday night, is that ok?" Gerard nods. "I have plans with Pete tomorrow," Mikey says, and Gerard can't keep the smirk off his face, "but I can come by, before."

"To check on me? Mikey, I'm fine," Gerard says. "Anyway, maybe I have plans tomorrow, too."

"Sure you do," Mikey says.

Frank figures Gerard is lying to mess with Mikey, but it feels like it takes Gerard ages to come home the next day, and Frank can't tell if it's just because he's worried and waiting that it feels different. Gerard hangs up his jacket, turns on all the lights and closes all the shades, checks the messages on his phone, puts the tea kettle on.

Then he says into the quiet, empty room, "I went to your grave today, Frankie."

As the first thing that Gerard has ever said to him directly, that wasn't in a dream, it's kind of weird. Frank walks into the hallway and stands next to Gerard, his hands opening and closing in fists. The idea of Gerard visiting Frank's grave – the idea that he has a grave – is unnerving and foreign, like the obituary, which is still on the fridge.

"I thought it might be different, somehow, since I know you're here," Gerard says, "But it was just like a normal grave. I hope that doesn't hurt your feelings," Gerard says really quickly. "It was very nice, for a tombstone and all, shiny marble with your name. Francis Anthony Iero," Gerard says. "I like the name Frank, though. It suits you. Frankie." Gerard voice sounds scared and uncertain, like he always does when he starts talking to the house, but then he settles into it, and it feels like a real conversation. Frank pretends that Gerard is far away and calling him on the phone, telling Frank a story that he just listens to, like he doesn't have to say a word for Gerard to know he's listening.

Gerard says, his voice a little trembly now, "There's something weird going on with this house, and I wonder....I wonder if it's why you got stuck here, if there was something weird about the house when you lived here, and you're trapped somehow. It freaks me out, Frankie, this house, and all the weird things. I get worried that you're freaked out, too, stuck here when you probably should have moved on." Gerard is quiet for a long moment before he says, "I'm glad you're here, Frankie," and then he's quiet. Frank stays close by his side for the rest of the night until Gerard falls asleep. Frank knows that Mikey's friend Schechter is coming tomorrow, and Frank wishes he could tell Gerard he's worried about what's going to happen, what it is that Schechter might do, but it's all a vague threat, hovering just outside of Frank's thoughts as Gerard drifts off and Frank gets as close as he ever can to something like sleep.

  
Schechter unpacks an enormous white candle from his messenger bag and slams it on the table like a gavel. "We need a séance," Schechter says. Schechter totally looks like the sort of guy who Frank would have met at a club if he hadn't started getting too sick to wait in the lines and coughing too much to enjoy the music. He greets Mikey with a nod and Gerard with a handshake and then pulls out three more candles from inside his bag.

Almost immediately Gerard is speaking over Mikey, saying, "That's not real, séances are for palm reader tricks and fucking little girl sleepovers."

At the same time Mikey was saying, "Are you kidding? Those are dangerous and what if something actually spoke back and told us it wanted to eat Gerard's brain or whatever," and Schechter silences them by waving a bunch of sage tied with blue thread in both of their faces like it was a dangerous weapon - and Frank thought, maybe it was.

"Both of you shut the fuck up," Schechter says. "God, I knew you'd be a handful. One of you thinks a ghost in his apartment is like having a fucking friendly neighbor, and the other thinks that if you speak the wrong words in the wrong order you'll conjure a zombie on top of the ghost."

"But I don't want to upset - " Gerard says at the same time Mikey says, "What if it's like conjuring and it - "

"I said shut the fuck up, or I'll walk out this door," Schechter says, and then seems to reconsider. "No, actually, you know what, I won't walk out that door, because then if something happens to the two of you it'll be my fault, and you'll die thinking you were right about this zombie shit, and we can't have that." He surveys the room, with Gerard and Mikey now looking scolded. "I'm going to get a few things from my trunk and I'll be right back. Can either of you cook? Why don't we make something for dinner, there's no need to have a séance on an empty stomach."

Schechter comes back with a carefully labeled tackle box filled with what Frank thinks looks like the contents of a gourmet kitchen's spice rack. Over his shoulder he has a backpack which reveals itself to be carefully packed with candles, flashlights, and an assortment of small gadgets that Frank thinks could be a picklock set.

He sets it down on the table and begins unpacking carefully selected items.

"We're having a fucking séance and that's the end of it," Schechter says, and sounds like he means it. "What are you making us for dinner?"

The séance involves candles which Gerard worries might cause a fire, chalk which Mikey protests loudly as not going to be as effective as grease pencil and a silver bowl filled with water - probably holy water, Frank thinks, and a flash of Schechter in church dipping a measuring cup into the font. Although from what Frank's seen of Schechter, he probably got it wholesale mail order from a church supply company. Schechter also has four cloth bags which Mikey demands to know the ingredients of and which Schechter, finally exasperated, tells him are fucking lavender sachets to make the place smell nice.

"It's for protection, isn't it," Mikey says, as Schechter finishes outlining the chalk circle and begins lighting the candles.

"Yes, lavender-scented protection," Schechter says dryly. "Get the fuck in the circle."

Schechter begins reading from a spiral-bound notebook, something that Frank thinks must be Latin because of all the weird unfamiliar sounds. Gerard has his fingertips on the bowl of holy water like he's waiting any minute to use it to put out the fire. Mikey looks around like he's expecting a shimmering vision to appear before them. And Schechter is speaking like he's reading out instructions how to put together a particularly complicated piece of assembly-required furniture, eyes serious, jaw set, fingers moving down the text as he reads.

He stops, and looks up, looks around. He looks through Frank, who's standing just to the right of the circle. Frank isn't putting money on whether this séance would work - as serious as Schechter seems about it, Frank doesn't feel like he's being summoned. He doesn't feel anything different. Schechter's eyes sweep the room and he looks through Frank again. Frank moves in front of Gerard, waves feebly. He even tries Mikey. None of them see him.

"Nothing's happening," Gerard says, and Schechter glares at him.

"It's a ghostly phone call," he says. "Ghosts don't have to answer." But then suddenly there's a...thickening in the air. Like steam or heat waves moving opposite Frank's side of the circle. Frank's the first to see it. Schechter and Mikey and Gerard notice it a minute later, when the hissing sound starts, just like a tea kettle, or the heat from an old radiator.

"There we go," Schechter says softly, and then he takes out the book again, starts reading in Latin.

"Christ," Mikey says. "I can see it."

Gerard is quiet, and Frank looks closer and Gerard is squinting into the steam. Frank is heartened to think Gerard might be looking for him.

"Someone's answered the phone. Go on, ask a question," Schechter says.

"Hi," Gerard says meekly, and Mikey sighs. "Hi, I'm Gerard," he says more boldly.

There's a louder hiss. Frank almost thinks it sounds like an answer. The thing is, it isn't Frank. He wasn't sure, at first, whether the steam was him, whether he was doing it, some unknown ghost power. But it's not Frank, he's sure of it. The steam, the heat, the moving waves is something else - someone else, and Frank suddenly understands. This thing has been making the lights flicker, making the cold spots. Moving things, breaking things. It's completely clear to Frank, much clearer than thinking he was doing it without realizing it, doing things that spooked Gerard when he didn't want to at all. This made much more sense - there wasn't just one ghost in this house, there were two.

Frank tried to think if he'd ever felt the cold spots when he'd lived here, ever seen flickering lights or mysteriously opening and closing doors, if he ever felt a presence. But like everything else that happened before he became a ghost, it's clouded. He knows he has the memories, he just can't quite reach them, like they're dust, impossibly small and far away, slipping right through his fingers.

"You used to live here, didn't you," Gerard is addressing the spirit. A magazine flips open on the floor, a few pages flip by.

"That's probably a yes," Schechter says. "I figure it wouldn't say anything if it wanted to say no."

"Are you......happy?" Gerard asks. There's no answer. Gerard looks stricken.

And it suddenly is imperative that Frank try to move a book, to show Gerard that he shouldn't be speaking to the steam, to the air, to whatever that is, because it's not Frank, Frank's right here and Gerard should be talking to him. But instead the other ghost, the other spirit, knocks over a glass from the table and the sound of it shattering shakes the three men in the protective circle, and Frank, who can't quite touch one of the books, abandons the task and rushes into the kitchen to see what's broken, to see if he can see the other spirit.

"Was that a yes?" Gerard asks. "You said, if it was a no, they'd just not doing anything, right?"

Frank watches from the kitchen, and even there he can see Schechter's expression is carefully shrouded. "I don't think that's a yes, Gerard," Schechter says. "Broken things aren't really ever a good sign."

Gerard seems ready with an answer, but he stops and bites his bottom lip. Frank wants to tell him that, with all the time he spends playing with his lip between his teeth, he should get a lip ring.

Schechter says, "Ok, that's enough long distance calls to the spirit world, let's wrap this up." Schechter's voice lifts in a loud Latin incantation, and he systematically blows out the candles, picks up the sachets in a clockwise order, and breaks the chalk circle.

Frank couldn't actually see the steam, the waves of the air for the last half of the séance, the thing that was the manifested other spirit, but he could feel it now, all of the time. He wondered if the séance had somehow awakened his ghostly senses, because he could feel the other ghost, the same way he knew that someone else was in the house. It was like something was out of place, like there was a weight, a magnet, pulling him, or repelling him from wherever the spirit was. He could feel it in the kitchen, but the closer he got, the slower he was moving. It had to be really powerful, Frank was sure, more powerful than he was, so maybe it was older. Maybe ghosts got more powerful the longer they were around. Maybe the séance kicked his powers into fast forward and he'd be able to warn Gerard when the spirit was getting near.

Because just like Schechter, Frank could tell the spirit wasn't friendly.

"Now don't get all freaked out," Schechter was saying, and he started collecting candles. Frank watched as a little hot wax spilled onto Schechter's fingers and Schechter just peeled it off. "I know what you were thinking, that you had a nice, friendly ghost, but there's a reason Casper's a fucking cartoon. There aren't really friendly ghosts."

"But - " Gerard protests, still inside the chalk circle but toeing at the mark.

"Hang on a minute," Schechter says. "I didn't say there aren't fucking real life Caspers out there to help you solve mysteries and save you from a burning building, but it's pretty rare. Even the good-seeming ghosts are dangerous," Schechter says, and he makes a face like he doesn't want to say what he's going to say next. "Even when they mean well, they're.....they're ghosts and so they don't always get things right. They're stuck, in our world but not entirely in our world, and it's not like they can just reach out and help us. Something's wrong with them."

Gerard's face kind of twists, and his eyes get sad. "But they don't mean to hurt us. They don't mean to break things. They're just....confused."

"Any contact with a spirit is draining your energy," Schechter says. "There's no such thing as positive contact – even if it's not obviously harmful or violent, there's something that's not in the natural order with a spirit, something that's gone wrong between living and death, and spending too much time with that wrongness, getting too close, will eventually make you the same."

"You watch over your brother," Schechter adds quietly as Mikey walks past, just loud enough that Frank can hear. Mikey nods.

Frank takes it as a charge for him, too. He's going to watch over Gerard. He's going to explore every corner of this house, try to figure out where the spirit is lurking, what it wants. No matter how hard it is for Frank to get close, he's going to find a way. Because he's figured it out. That's the reason he's here. To watch over Gerard. That's the reason he didn't move on or whatever it was that was supposed to happen to him after he died. He didn't get rid of this angry ghost while he was living here and so he stayed so he can protect someone else. Gerard, especially, who's special, who can see Frank. Frank can do it, now that he knows his purpose he feels even stronger.

  
Schechter leaves strict instructions to call if there are any more signs of ghost activity, and that he's going to go do some research. He pulls Mikey outside with him with the excuse of helping him get directions to the next ghost sighting he's going to, and Gerard goes to the kitchen and puts a piece of bread in the toaster and then lights a cigarette. He presses the heels of his hands to his eyes, and then takes a long drag of the cigarette. He jumps when his toast pops, and then Mikey is shutting the door.

"Look, you made me toast," Mikey says, and he feints stealing it but stops when Gerard doesn't respond to fight back.

"Don't freak out, Gee, so you have a ghost."

"Schechter said he was dangerous, but I don't think he is," Gerard says after a minute. He takes a half-hearted bite of his toast.

"You could move," Mikey says.

"No," Gerard says firmly.

"Ok, well, I'm staying the night, then," Mikey says.

Gerard nods, but he says, "I swear, I'm not in any danger. So what if the ghost breaks a glass. I just won't walk around barefoot."

Mikey goes upstairs to check on the status of the guest room and he promises Gerard he'll take his bed if he doesn't like the look of things. Gerard, seemingly at a loss for what else to do, makes another piece of toast. He seems to be looking all around his kitchen for some evidence that his apartment really is haunted, that he's not out of his mind, and Frankie wishes that he could reassure him, that Gerard does have a ghost - two ghosts - and that he's going to be ok. He pops the toast before it's done and butters it copiously. Gerard startles at a sound, but it's just Mikey walking around upstairs, the normal sound of a real person on the floor above. Frank sees Gerard relax when he realizes it and Frank's glad that Mikey's staying.

Not that he really needs Mikey there to protect him. Frank knows that Mikey's just watching out for his brother, but he's irritated, too, that Gerard's not in his normal routine, not able to settle down like he does when he's alone, drawing in the chair, watching out the window, sitting around in just a t-shirt and sweatpants.

Frank looks away from for just a second, and when he looks back, Gerard is lying on the tile of the kitchen floor, the fucking dirty floor, with his eyes unfocused, a string of saliva stretching from his mouth, his hands curled at his sides.

Frank panics and tries to shout for Mikey, but he can't seem to make a sound, and he knows Mikey wouldn't hear him anyway. He thinks that maybe Gerard is choking on his toast, except that something looks wrong about the way he's lying there, like someone's on top of him, and then Frank sees it, sees the shimmer of the other spirit, right over Gerard's chest.

"No," he shouts, and rushes for the spirit, his hands outstretched, trying to grab at whatever he can. It's like diving from a cliff into freezing cold water. Frank feels his brain freeze at the shock of it, at the pain, at the cold. But whatever this thing is, whatever it's doing, Frank has to stop it. He focuses all his energy on that, on _stop_ and Frank feels the moment when he wins, when the thing lets Gerard go. And then Frank is touching Gerard. His hands are actually on Gerard's arms and Frank pulls him away, away from the shimmering thing, from the wall of cold, and then he kind of lets Gerard's arms drops because Frank can't feel his hands anymore. He can't feel his arms. He can't feel anything. He drops to the floor beside Gerard.

Mikey seems to sense that something is happening because he comes pounding down the stairs and breaks into a full run when he sees Gerard on the floor.

"I'm fine," Gerard gasps as Mikey comes crashing to his knees, checking Gerard all over. Red spots are blooming all over Gerard's neck. They look like fingerprints. Frank is still desperately cold. The cold starts to get replaced with dizziness, and as Mikey tries to get Gerard to stand up so he can sit down in one of the chairs, Frank blacks out for a while, from what feels like exhaustion, like sickness, like a fever. He feels like he used to feel when the pneumonia or bronchitis or latest ear infection caught hold of his immune system and twisted it hard. He feels drained, like he can't move. When he comes to again, he's sitting on the stairs, his head in his hands, and he wants to go check on Gerard, even though he knows Mikey is here and Mikey will take care of him, and it's good because Frank can't move. For a moment it feels like when he collapsed in the hallway before - before he died, where he couldn't move his fingers, then his arms, then his head was too heavy, then the air was too heavy to breathe. Frank presses his hands over his eyes, listens to Mikey saying, "It's ok, Gee, I'll make you a cup of tea," and then Frank doesn't hear anything for a while.

When he opens his eyes again, he feels better - moving isn't as hard, he isn't as tired. Gerard is sitting in the kitchen, looking ragged, his hair messy and plastered to the side of his face, his face bent close to the steam of the tea. Frank goes and stands close, all but putting a hand on Gerard. He knows he can touch him now, if he tries hard enough, if he needs to. Frank starts to feel shaky just thinking about it, Gerard on the floor, choked, held down by something threatening and invisible.

Mikey comes back into the room and Frank startles, steps back from Gerard. "I called Schechter," Mikey says.

"What the hell does Schechter know about this shit?" Gerard's voice was hoarse. Frank could hear it, his throat rough and damaged by an invisible force, choking away Gerard's air.

"He knows a hell of a lot more than we do right now," Mikey says, and then takes Gerard's cup from him and refills it with steaming water, and, to Frank's amusement, a slice of lemon.

"He says he'll be by tomorrow, with someone who knows even more than he does. He says his name's Bob, and this sort of thing is his job."

"Who does this for their job?" Gerard says, and Mikey just shakes his head.

  
That night, Gerard waits until he hears Mikey's door close and then he says, "Frank?"

Of course Frank is there, hasn't looked away from Gerard since. He's sure if he'd just been watching more closely – and he wasn't going to let it happen again.

Frank says, even though he knows Gerard can't hear him, "I'm here."

Gerard takes off his shirt and tosses it on the floor, and Frank feels warmth for the first time since before Gerard was attacked. His eyes are drawn to the expanse of Gerard's back, and then to the red angry spots he can see on Gerard's throat, already bruising. Frank wants to press his mouth to them, to lick away the pain, and he actually takes a few steps toward Gerard, thinking maybe he could try it, he could try and touch him again, give Gerard some comfort, kiss away the nervousness in his voice.

"I know you saved me," Gerard says. "I could feel you, pulling me away. I don't know what happened, but I could feel you. So it means you're here, right?"

Gerard slides off his pants and Frank takes a step closer. Frank wants to slide his fingers along Gerard's spine, hold him close against his chest. "I wish I could know if you could hear me," Gerard says, and gets into bed, pulling the sheet up to his chin. "I guess I just have to assume you can, right?"

Frank sits on the edge of the bed and says, softly, "I can hear you. I'm here," he says, and Gerard, obviously exhausted, is asleep before he can say anything else.

  
Bob looks like he gets a lot of sun, which, Frank thinks, is probably kind of weird for a ghost hunter. Bob is a guy who wears sunglasses indoors. His blonde hair is bright, and he moves like he routinely carries huge equipment around. What's more, Frank can feel him. He can feel Bob's presence, in a way that's different from how he feels Gerard, or Mikey or Schechter or Ray. It's freaky, and for the first time since he died, he's really, really worried.

Schechter explained while they were waiting for Bob that he worked a few hauntings with him, ran the sound equipment and gone out on errands for things Bob needed on the job. Schechter made it clear that Bob was way out of his league, a professional, much better able to handle the situation at Gerard's.

Ray had spent the morning fixing supposedly creaking doors all around the apartment. It seemed that Gerard was trying to tell Ray in the nicest, most normal way possible that he thought he was being haunted by Frank. He didn't want to freak Ray out, but he thought it might help for Bob to have someone who knew Frank around when he came over. Ray had looked totally alarmed but agreed without argument, and, unable to sit still waiting for the ghost expert, had apparently decided that WD-40 was the best way of coping with the weirdness.

Bob shakes Gerard's hand, slides his sunglasses down his nose and says, "Can I look at your throat?" Gerard startles, then pulls his collar back, and Bob leans in close to look at the fingerprint-sized bruises. He studies them for a long time, and then steps back, and Gerard, who had been holding his breath, lets it out in a rush. Frank goes to stand near Gerard, because he's concerned. He can feel Gerard tensing up, and he's not sure if it's the memory of the ghost attack or Bob himself, but Frank feels tense, too.

"That's some pretty serious bad spirit, leaving bruises." Bob says, and then he looks up at the ceiling, down at the floor. "Lots of spirits can choke you, but not all of them can actually touch you to leave bruises," Bob says, and doesn't bother to explain further. "Show me where it happened," he says, and goes to his duffle bag, pulls out something that looks like a portable ham radio.

Gerard walks over to the spot on the floor where he fell, then points to the spot where he was dragged. He can't seem to speak. Frank walks over, too. Bob tunes his radio, and then points it at the spot in the hallway where Gerard is pointing. The machine makes a series of beeps, which Bob interprets with a nod.

"Is there some sort of spirit residue?" Mikey asks. Bob startles and looks up, then smiles at Mikey, huge and open.

"More like an echo, yeah," Bob says. "You're the brother?" Mikey nods. "You witness the attack?" Mikey shakes his head, looks pale.

"But my brother isn't making it up!" Mikey protests.

"Oh no, I'm not saying he did," Bob says. "People see different things." Bob is quiet again, and runs the machine around Mikey, then around Gerard, up his right side and down his left. It goes crazy when it points at Gerard's hand. Not his hand, though, Frank realizes a second later. It's pointing right at Frankie's chest.

"Huh," Bob says. He moves the machine toward Gerard's chest. The beeping stops. He moves it left again - right at Frank?. It goes crazy, beeping and crackling.

"Huh," Bob says again, looks at his machine, and looks Gerard right in the eyes and says, "According to this, you've got a ghost standing right next to you."

Everyone but Gerard and Bob take a step back. Even Frank, like for a moment he forgets he shouldn't be afraid of himself.

The thing is, Gerard is smiling. Not a stressed, frightened smile, but a real smile. "Oh, that's probably just Frank," Gerard says, and Bob opens his mouth, closes it, and opens it again.

"Wait, what?" Bob says. Mikey is actually hiding behind his hands.

"Frank," Gerard says again. "You didn't tell him the whole story," Gerard says, turning on Schechter. "He can't be here if he's going to hurt Frank!" Gerard starts getting flustered, and Frank steps close again. Bob's machine goes wild.

"Ok, ok, calm down," Bob says, to Gerard, and, Frank thinks, to him, as well. He feels Bob's energy - feels Bob's presence - telling him to calm down. Gerard is still tense, and he splays his feet and crosses his arms. "Someone tell me who Frank is."

"He died here," Gerard says. "Before I moved in. Ray told me."

Frank listens to Gerard tell the story of his death, some of the things he hadn't actually heard, like how Ray unlocked the door when the postman saw someone slumped in the hallway, how Frank was already cold when Ray tried to check his pulse, see if he was breathing. Ray looks sad when he talks about packaging all of Frank's stuff up.

"Were you friends?" Bob asks, and Ray looks really thoughtful.

"Yeah, I guess," Ray says and Frank's heart breaks a little. He thought of Ray as a friend. But then Ray continues, "It's not like I didn't like Frank a lot, we grew up together, you know? But he was just - distant. You know, he never talked about the people he was dating, never really hung out with people."

Suddenly, Frank hears a crash upstairs. "Is anyone up there?" Bob asks, and without waiting for an answer, he takes off up the stairs two at a time.

Frank is the last to get upstairs, because after Schechter and Mikey and Ray bolted up the stairs after Bob, Gerard had turned to the empty kitchen and said, "It's ok, Frankie, I won't let anyone hurt you," and then went up the stairs himself, leaving Frank frozen in the kitchen, overwhelmed with shock, with how much he just wanted to touch Gerard again, even if it made him disappear for good.

Upstairs, the ugly lamp in Gerard's bedroom is smashed, the lamp base and the light bulb, and the small mirror Gerard had balanced on his dresser is smashed, and two of the dresser drawers are yanked out, their contents overturned.

"Oh, man," Gerard is saying as Frank gets up the stairs. "My lamp!"

"That was an ugly lamp," Mikey says. Gerard glares at him, then laughs.

Bob isn't paying attention to any of them. He is ignoring the lamp, the dresser drawers, all the debris, in favor of the mirror shards. He picks one of the smaller shards up, looks at it, then sets it down in what Frank thinks is exactly the same place. Bob doesn't even bother with his machine. He looks at Gerard and says, "We have a problem." Gerard pales, but Bob doesn't say anything more. He looks at Mikey and says, 'Come help me set up some equipment," and then, as he's disappearing, to Schechter, "Take my credit card, let's go get these good people some pizza."

  
While Gerard watches, Mikey and Bob set up equipment all over Gerard's apartment, video cameras, recording equipment, and a bunch of readers that spit out data into a small computer screen. Schechter comes back after about twenty minutes with four boxes of pizza, and Ray has gone next door and come back with a liter of Coke and a bunch of glasses, because Gerard only has two left.

Bob comes in with a book the size of a world atlas, but infinitely older-looking, gray like years of dust have soaked into the cover, with crisp, thin pages that look like they're going to crumble as soon as Bob touches them. Bob treats the book with respect, pushing the Coke and pizza aside and flipping slowly through the pages.

"This," Bob says, "is a grimoire. Do not, under any circumstances, open this or read anything, aloud or silently, without my supervision. I'm not saying you're stupid, just that this book has secrets I don't know yet, and we've already got enough trouble as it is."

"You keep saying that," Gerard says. "But you just mean that we've got an angry spirit who can break things, right?" Gerard is eyeing the grimoire with both apprehension and curiosity, and he nervously grabs a slice of pizza and takes a bite. It's still hot and Gerard spends a few moments making pained faces and trying to cool his mouth until Ray gives him his glass of Coke and Gerard takes a long sip.

Bob is focused on flipping through the grimoire, and he glances up at Schechter, clearly asking him to answer.

"You had your bedroom trashed while we were downstairs," Schechter says. "While the EMF said there was a ghost right next to you. So you've got a spirit who can move fast, move from docile to destructive- "

"Or there are two ghosts," Gerard interrupts.

Bob looks up quickly from the grimoire. "You think two ghosts is better?"

Gerard hesitates. "It's just - it just means that one of them is bad, and the other one's - the other one's just Frank."

Bob turns back to the grimoire without answering and Mikey comes to stand by Gerard's side. "Listen, Gee, I think maybe you're so focused on Frank that you're not seeing - "

"Don't argue with me about this, Mikey," Gerard says in a rare burst of anger. "You don't understand."

The room is quiet, and Bob, having found what he wanted in the grimoire, closes it and puts his hand briefly on the top as though making sure it's really shut.

Frank hovers far away at the door, because the grimoire makes him feel like Bob did when he first got here, like he's in trouble, like there's a power here that's stronger than him.

Bob says, "Whether we have a malevolent, powerful spirit here who can seem like it's two places at once, or whether we have two spirits, I need to take some measurements and readings, because I am still not entirely sure I know what's going on and we can't do anything until I have a better idea. We should take advantage of the trashed bedroom as a use of malevolent energy. Not that I want to diminish the danger, but things are always going to be quieter after a violent act like that." Bob tucks the grimoire under his arm, and says, "I hope you don't mind if I camp out in your living room. Normally, I'd say that we'd be sure to get the best readings at twilight or the middle of the night, but considering this thing doesn't mind trashing a room at supper time, I'd like to be prepared to gather some information at a bunch of different times."

Bob nods at Schechter, and then at Ray. "You look strapping, want to help?" Bob says, and Ray blushes and they both follow him out.

Gerard's living room starts to fill up pretty quickly with Bob's equipment, and Frank starts feeling like the place is too crowded. Gerard seems to feel that way, too, since he's never had this many people in his place, not while Frank's been watching at least, and Gerard keeps backing up against the wall to let Mikey or Bob pass by with some equipment. Finally, Gerard grabs his drawing pad and a handful of pencils and retreats upstairs and Frank follows.

It feels like what Frank's used to again, the calm closeness of being next to Gerard, the scratch of Gerard's pencil on the paper, the sound of Gerard's breathing. He sits down on the floor, his back to the bed. He imagines that if he were really here, if Gerard could see him, he'd reach out and absently pat Frank's head, maybe trail his fingers down his jaw. Frank likes that thought a lot, likes all the thoughts about Gerard touching him. He wonders whether this is ever going to be enough, just the thought of Gerard and not the actual touch, Gerard talking to the air where Frank may or may not be, the complete exhaustion after trying to talk to Gerard in his dreams. Frank knows he has to stay to protect Gerard from this other spirit, but he's not sure what will happen next, after Bob manages to get rid of it. Frank wonders if, over time, he'll get stronger. If he'll be able to do more things. If he'll ever be able to talk to Gerard, to tell him. Tell him how he feels.

  
Ray's gone home for the night, insisting he's right next door if anything happens, Schechter is making coffee and Bob is sitting with a flashlight, a dagger, and sixteen pixie sticks lined up in front of his sleeping bag. Mikey doesn't like the guest room so he's sleeping in the hallway under a pile of blankets. Gerard is tossing fitfully in his bed, his arm out of the blankets. Frank stares for a long time at the frayed cuff of Gerard's shirt, and then he walks to the other side of the bed and lies down. It's probably a mistake, but in the dark of the house, Frank is scared - there's a ghost hunter here and Frank isn't sure that he's not fair game. He reaches out for Gerard, gently, like it's a real touch, only Frank has to concentrate hard, has to think of this and nothing else. And that isn't all that hard, to think of just Gerard. Only Gerard, Frank's fingers meeting the soft skin of the inside of Gerard's elbow.

Finally he manages to make contact and to feel it, to feel Gerard's elbow move slightly under his touch, Gerard's skin warm under his fingers. Gerard takes a deep, sleepy intake of breath and then Frank is standing in the old kitchen again, looking down at the flower-pattered linoleum. Gerard is sitting at the table, reading Bob's grimoire. Gerard doesn't seem to notice him and so Frank clears his throat, and then says, softly, "Gerard?"

Gerard turns at his name but can't seem to see Frank for a minute, and Frank's chest aches with disappointment, because Gerard can't see him here, either. "I'm right here," Frank says, waving his hand feebly, and then Gerard turns back to the grimoire.

Frank collapses against the kitchen counter and wonders if this is all he's going to get, his hips poked by the sharp edge of the melamine counter, the smell of fried eggs and cigarettes, Frank lost in another foreign place, alone, unable to talk to Gerard even in his dream. He wonders if what happened before was some fluke, or worse, it means that he's losing his strength. He's losing whatever power he had that kept him here, and maybe he's just supposed to let go. It makes sense then that this is happening when is here. Maybe he should just let them banish him or exorcise him or whatever it is they're going to do. He should let them take him down like he's just as evil as the other thing in the house. Then at least he'd be able to feel something other than disappointment, despair, the loneliness of watching everyone's lives go on.

"It's not true," Gerard says, standing and closing Bob's grimoire. "I read this and I know all about ghosts now," Gerard says, gesturing to the grimoire, which is pulsing slightly on the table. "You're not bad, Frankie."

And it's when Gerard says his name that Frank looks up. Gerard is close, his feet practically touching Frank's, a small, tender smile on his face. "I've read this whole thing," Gerard says, pointing now at Frank's chest. "You're much easier to understand than that book."

Frank reaches up for Gerard's hand and presses it under his own, over his heart. "It's not working anymore," Frank says. Gerard only smiles.

"Yes, it is," Gerard says. "It's just very quiet." Gerard leans closer and presses his ear to Frank's chest. "I can hear it, though," he says.

Frank has to try several times before he can make his hand move to cup the back of Gerard's head, but when he does, he's rewarded with Gerard's sigh and the feel of Gerard's hair under his fingers. They stand there like that for some time, Frank isn't sure how long, and as much as Gerard says he can hear Frank's heart, Frank can't feel it himself, no matter how hard he tries.

Gerard stands up and Frank lets his hand slide through Gerard's hair, down onto his neck. Frank can feel the muscles and tendons, Gerard's pulse, his skin. Frank hasn't touched anything in so long and he's thought about this every day, touching Gerard. Frank feels Gerard's chest rise and fall with a deep intake of breath, feels Gerard's body shift so that he's closer, Gerard's hands settling on Frank's shoulders.

"Frankie," Gerard whispers and then he leans in and kisses Frank, as soft and as insubstantial as the whisper.  
\--  
Frank can't help the sound that escapes his throat, and he chases Gerard's mouth, kissing him more deeply, his hands stroking the skin of Gerard's neck, Gerard's fingers caressing Frank's arms, over his shoulders, pulling Frank closer and closer until they're flush.

"I know how this story ends," Gerard says.

"Tell me," Frank asks between kisses, sliding his hands across Gerard's back and pulling him close.

"Like this," Gerard says, and then, like a dream, because it's a dream, they're in bed, legs tangled, the sheet draped across Gerard's bare back.

"Yes," Frank says, and then Gerard is kissing him, moving above him, and Frank feels the same blinding ecstasy as the first time he watched Gerard in the shower, feels Gerard shudder above him, feels Gerard clutch at his arms, pressing messy kisses to his forehead and the side of his mouth.

  
Frank falls back out of the dream feeling better than he has in weeks, and he thinks it's the happy sated feeling, and that was just really ridiculously hot and strange but so, so good. Gerard smiles before he opens his eyes and reaches out for Frank. And then Frank's bliss vanishes because Gerard looks wretched, alarmingly pale with dark circles under his eyes. He looks like he hasn't slept in weeks. Frank backs up, backs away, and Gerard is still smiling, though he winces when he sits up.

"Frank? I know you're there," he says. He swings his feet over the bed and is all unsteady. "Thanks," he says shyly, and then stumbles into the bathroom.

Frank is suddenly afraid that he's not really doing Gerard any good. Sure, he can try to protect him from the bad spirit, but Frank doesn't really have that much power, to protect Gerard from whatever it is that makes Bob sound so apprehensive, so tight-voiced and sober.

Frank's not helping, and maybe he's making Gerard weaker. He remembers what Schechter said – any contact with a spirit is draining your energy. Spending too much time with that will make you the same. If Frank stays here, he's eventually only going to make Gerard like he is, lost and groundless, a pointless existence with no way out. Frank can't let that happen to Gerard.

  
Frank follows Gerard downstairs. Bob's drinking coffee from a travel cup and he hands one to Gerard, and he grabs Gerard under the chin for a minute and looks at him, turning his face from side to side like a mom checking to make sure her kid has washed. He lets Gerard's chin go, and then beckons him over to his equipment, like he's going to show Gerard some readings, but then he says, in a hushed voice, "Has Frank tried to contact you? Have you spoken to him?" Gerard startles for a moment, and Frank wonders how much Bob can divine about what happened from just how Gerard looks.

"Did you find something out?" Gerard asks, instead of answering. He looks happy that Bob's talking about Frank like he's a real person, not using air quotes around his name or anything or making fun of Gerard.

"Just the beginning of a theory," Bob says.

"Are you going to tell me the theory? This is my haunted house." Gerard tries to be defiant, but he looks too weak, too hollow around his cheeks, dark shadowed eyes, and Frank hangs on the word haunted. Gerard does look haunted.

"If you tell me whether you talked to Frank last night," Bob says, a stretch of a smile of defiance.

Gerard deflates. "How do you know?"

"It's hard to explain," Bob says. "I don't know, that's the real answer. I just thought that might explain some of the data. And," Bob hesitates, "The way you look."

Bob answer is confirmation enough for Frank that this was Frank's fault. Gerard rubs his hand over his face. "What?"

"Gerard, you look like shit," Bob says. "And I bet you don't feel any better."

Gerard looks about to protest and then he stops. "Yeah, but it was such a great night," he says, and then stops. Frank wants to tell Gerard to tell Bob all of it, because if it's his fault that Gerard looks like this, if he's putting Gerard in danger than he should be sent to wherever it is he's supposed to have gone. Even if it means leaving Gerard.

There's a flicker on Bob's face but he doesn't say anything, just waits for Gerard to continue.

Gerard sighs and takes a long sip of his coffee. "It was a dream," Gerard says, and then sips more of his coffee before continuing. "Except, it was – well, it had to have been a dream, because I was asleep, and there were all those things that always happen in dreams, where you're talking in metaphors and time moves fast in ways that wouldn't make sense otherwise."

"And Frank was in this dream?" Bob asks.

Gerard nods. "Frank was the dream. He and I - " Gerard starts to color a little bit.

"You slept together,"

"No!" Gerard says, loud enough to make Schechter look over. Bob waves him away.

"Hey, sorry, I'm not saying anything about your virtue or whether you're an easy first date or anything," Bob says.

"We just kissed," Gerard says after a moment, and Frank can't help but remember, let his mind wander over how it felt. When he looks up at Gerard, though, at how worn he is, the thought deflates. "But it felt like – "

"Sex," Bob finishes for him. Gerard nods. "Yeah, ok. And have you and Frank – "

"No!" Gerard says again, and this time both Ray and Schechter look over.

"But you've communicated, other ways." Gerard nods again. "Ok, I need to do some research," but Gerard stops him with a hand on his arm.

"You said, if I told you, you'd tell me your theory."

Bob cracks a smile. "That's right, I did," he says. "Ok, then, well here's my theory, and do me a favor and don't tell the rest of the gang here. I don't like to spout theories without more research, but you deserve to know what I'm thinking, even if it turns out later that I'm wrong. And that could happen, ok?"

Gerard agrees, and Bob says, "I think your Frankie here is drawing energy from contact with you. The more intimate, the more energy."

Gerard's face is wide open with shock. He whispers, harshly, "Are you saying you think Frankie is...an incubus?"

Frank is horrified. He'd guessed, especially after this morning, that he was taking something from Gerard, but if he'd been doing it all along, but from the very first day Gerard was here – if he'd been existing be feeding off of Gerard, taking his life from him - the thought is repulsive. And the more intimate, the more energy, it meant that he – that the reason he felt so incredible when he was that close to Gerard wasn't just because it was sex, it was because he was tapping into Gerard like he was some sort of battery.

Bob kind of shrugs and holds his hands up at the same time. "Sort of," Bob says, but that's all.

Gerard looks positively insulted. "That's not – Frank's not like that."

Bob just shrugs. "I said I'm not sure what exactly's going on, now don't get mad or hit me or something for insulting your boyfriend. It's just a theory. I've got to go do some research," Bob says. "You call me if you hear from Frank, ok? Otherwise, I'll be back this afternoon."

  
Frank does his best to stay away from Gerard for the rest of the afternoon, hiding upstairs in the guest room, watching out the windows, going downstairs when Gerard comes up, as though by staying as far away as possible he could make up for what he had taken. It doesn't really work, though, because Frank finds himself drifting towards Gerard, pulled inextricably toward him, and the minute he loses focus on staying away from Gerard, he finds himself standing right next to him again, watching as Gerard watches the rain.

Frank hates the rain. He especially hates it when it rains at night. He remembered that it was always so gloomy and cold, and it made the night seem endless, water droplets hitting the window as a reminder that he was inside and alone, the house filled with the sound of rain until Frank put something loud on the stereo to drown it out. The swishing of the trees, the creaking branches and shushing leaves. Thunder too, he hated. Thunder was the worst. It came out of nowhere, shook the house, shook his heart, rattled his nerves. Like something cosmic was happening outside, something way beyond his power to affect or avoid, a storm that felt like it swirled all around him. Frank drank his way through rainstorms, and when he didn't feel like drinking, he hid his way through them, pulling the curtains even when it was the afternoon. It was as dark as if it were nighttime, anyway. Sometimes when he'd be brave enough to check to see if the storm was over, he'd pull back a shade and be blinded by sunlight, and sunlight after a rainstorm was gorgeous, sure, brilliant and sparkling and yellow and warm, but the thing was, Frank resented it, just a little bit, for leaving him.

Gerard, it seems, loves the rain, though, and will pull back the curtains and press his face close up to the glass of the window as soon as the rain starts. Two nights in a row, when the rain starts just as the sun is going down, but is hidden by heavy storm clouds, making everything grey, Gerard pulls the stinky armchair up to the window, folds his legs, and just looks outside. No dinner, no cup of coffee in his hands, no drawing pad, nothing. Frank watches him for a minute before having to move himself, walk around the room. He can't understand how Gerard isn't bored out of his mind, just watching it rain. But then maybe he isn't watching the rain at all, or isn't just watching it. Maybe he's thinking, and the rain helps him think. That seems like Gerard, sure, to be captivated by the storm outside, to watch how it appears just through the rectangle of his window.

Frank steps closer as though he can get into Gerard's thoughts, peek into them the way Gerard watches out the window. The house has gotten dark, and Gerard, who's been sitting in the chair since it was daylight, doesn't seem to notice or doesn't care. It's the calm kind of darkness, with headlights passing by on the street, rain looking black against the pavement, the lawn, the front porch. Frank thinks he could probably learn to like the rain, or like sitting like this in a rainstorm, if he were with Gerard, Gerard's calm, and no thunder. Frank doesn't think he'd ever learn to like thunder, unless someone could tell him seconds before it was going to rumble, so he could be ready, so he could know the sound was coming.

"Lightning," Gerard says quietly to himself, and then counts, "Two, three, four," and then the thunder sounds, a low rumble. Frank, fascinated, steps closer to Gerard, squints at him, at the window, looking for more lighting. Wanting Gerard to count for him again. The lightning flashes again, a sharp crack coming with it, and then Gerard whispers, "two, three..." and before he can get to four, there's the thunder again. Frank is sure Gerard is counting for him.

Frank presses his face close to the window, looking out for more lightning, Gerard right next to him. The lightning flashes, lighting up the whole street with white for a second, and Frank can see it against his eyelids, so bright. Gerard blinks, too, and counts, "Two, three," and then he gasps just as the thunder sounds.

Gerard is looking at Frank's reflection in the window.

"Frankie?" Gerard says, the same quiet voice he used for counting the seconds between the lightning and the thunder. Gerard turns and looks over his shoulder, where Frank is standing, where Frank would be standing if Gerard could see him, but Frank watches as Gerard looks through him and past him. But when he looks back at the window, Gerard beams, because he's looking at Frank's reflection again, looking right into Frank's eyes reflected in the rain-spattered window.

"Hi," Gerard says, and Frank's heart somersaults.

"Hi," he says, but there's no sound, only his mouth moving in the reflection.

"You're really here, aren't you? I knew it," Gerard says, and Frank doesn't know what else to say, because Gerard can see him. Gerard knows he's there. "You're hot," Gerard says, and then flushes, and Frank can feel the grin stretching across his face, wildly pleased and amused. He wants to say, "So are you," but he's afraid it will be unreadable, and will make Gerard nervous or frustrated that he can't figure out what Frank's saying. So he tries to say it with his eyes, putting everything he feels into the way he's looking at Gerard's reflection, Gerard looking back into his eyes.

Gerard seems to understand. Of course Gerard understands, Gerard has understood everything about Frank since he moved here. Gerard is the only thing stopping Frank from going crazy, stuck in the house, unable to go anywhere, do anything, live or move on. Gerard has been company for Frank, a friend, someone who cares about him, and Gerard has given Frank something to do, someone to watch over, someone's life to share. Of course Gerard understands. Frank doesn't need to say anything at all.

The lightning flashes, even brighter than before, and Frank blinks away the shock of light, and when he looks back, Gerard's eyes are searching the window. He can't see Frank's reflection anymore, even though Frank is still in the same spot, still looking at Gerard, there eyes won't meet.

"I'm not gonna let anything happen to you, Frankie," Gerard says, to the window and then to the empty room. "I'm going to watch out for you."

Frank thinks it strange that that's the exact thing he was thinking about Gerard.

  
Ray brings over some paint supplies to touch up what he said was what normal wear and tear had done to the wainscoting in the hallway, and he's just setting the drop cloth and dipping the stir stick into the paint when there is a knock at the door. Gerard, who had been picking cereal from Mikey's bowl, jumps, and then steps into the hall.

"That's the door, right?" he asks, before he goes all the way down the hallway. No one disagrees with him, and Frank knows before Gerard opens the door that it's Bob.

"Schechter's picking up a couple of things for me, will you meet him outside when you hear his car, he's gonna need a hand with all the boxes," is the first thing out of his mouth.

Ray says, "Sure," and Bob cocks his head and then flashes Ray a smile. Ray smiles back and them immediately returns to his paint stirring.

"Did you find anything?" Gerard asks as soon as Bob's in the door.

"I did," Bob says, and sits down at the table and takes out a notebook, flips a few pages in. Frank is unsurprised to see that Bob's handwriting is small, perfectly legible block letters. "I found a lot of things that didn't make sense."

Frank watches as Gerard's face falls and he goes and stands closer, wishing he could wind his fingers in Gerard's.

"So, before I start telling you about things that don't actually make sense, I need you to tell me more about this house."

"But - " Gerard starts to protest. Mikey hands him his cereal, and Gerard, not sure what else to do in the face of Bob's questioning, drinks the leftover milk.

"What do you need to know?" Ray asks, wiping his hands on a well-worn rag.

Bob smiles at Ray again, and Ray kind of twists under the smile, and oh, Frank thinks, oh, that's what's going on. He can't help but feel jealous of the look, because they can share it, because no one should be looking at Bob like that when Bob is the one who can send Frank away. Gerard puts Mikey's cereal bowl in the sink and it clatters and the long look between Bob and Ray breaks.

"I need to know when this house was re-built, and what it was before, and who built that," he says directly to Ray, and then directed at all of them, "and I need to know everything you know about ley lines."

Frank has never even heard of ley lines, but as soon as Bob speaks the words, something seems to shift in the air.

"The house was built probably around 1890," Ray begins, "though there was never any official deed. The earliest date we have is when my grandfather bought it in 1907 and he guessed how old it was. And I don't know anything about ley lines," Ray adds as an afterthought.

Gerard and Mikey shake their heads in twin brotherly motions. "Never heard of them," Mikey says.

"I've only read about them mentioned, as a guide for where old churches and things were built," Schechter offers. "But I'm not really sure what they are."

"And not a lot of people are even sure they exist." Bob says. "It is, however, entirely possible that the person who built this house was a mystic, or something like, someone who believed in ley lines and built it exactly where it is for a specific purpose."

"Purpose?" Ray asks, "You mean it was something other than a house?"

"It was a stopping point. A marker indicating an intersection of ley lines." Everyone had a similar face of confusion, except Schechter, who was frowning.

"Houses aren't really supposed to be part of ley lines," Bob says. "They're supposed be made up of geographic and naturally occurring things, like mountains and stone outcroppings. It's supposed to be the spiritual world that designs the ley lines, and buildings and things can be built along them, but not – not as a part of them."

"I still don't understand what a ley line is," Mikey says.

"They're invisible mystical pathways," Bob says. "Power naturally flows along them. Sort of a spiritual energy superhighway."

"And this house is a part of a ley line?" Schechter asks. "It's actually inside the line?"

"Inside two," Bob says.

"I still don't understand what it means.," Gerard says. "So the house is on some mystical line. Is that why Frankie became a ghost when he died here?"

Frank fidgets and runs his fingers over the tattoos on his arm.

"Unfortunately, it's not that simple," Bob says. "From all the information I could get my hands on about the ley lines, a death in a house like this was more likely to go directly and instantly to the spirit world and move on completely. It would be like arriving in the Grand Central Station of the afterlife. So it doesn't really make a whole lot of sense that we'd have a ghost here, of all places."

"Are we sure it's Frank?" Mikey says.

"Of course it is, who else could it be?" Gerard says instantly and Frank so desperately wants to throw his arms around Gerard, even hold his hand, twine their fingers together reassuringly, smile at him so Gerard knows Frank needs his faith in him. But all Frank can do is stand there and listen.

"But what about the thing that attacked you? You say it's not Frank, that he wouldn't hurt you, but then - "Mikey trails off, worry creasing his face.

"That's another thing," Bob says. "You tell me that there are two ghosts," and Mikey tries to protest but Bob holds a hand up. "I'm not here to argue right now. If we're mystically not supposed to have a ghost in this house and we do, it's not that much of a leap to consider that we might have two."

Schechter presses the backs of his hands to his eyes. "We saw something with the séance, and it said it wasn't happy," he says. "Is there some chance that…." He hesitates and looks at Bob before going on, and Frank can tell that he's making sure with Bob that it's ok that he poses this question, and it amazes Frank that Bob seems to already know what Schechter's going to say. "Is there some chance that there was already something here in the house, and Frank got caught by it?"

Gerard looks perfectly horrified. "Something caught Frank?"

"It's possible," Bob says calmly. "It's possible that it's something else more complicated than that, too," Bob says, but when Schechter raises his eyebrows, looking for an explanation, Bob just shakes his head. "I said I found a lot of things that didn't make sense."

"Can't we just, like, do an exorcism on the house?" Mikey asks.

Bob just frowns. "I'd considered that, though exorcisms are kind of like taking a hacksaw to your arm because you've got a splinter in your finger."

"And in a house that's mystically charged in some way we don't understand," Schechter says.

"Schechter's got it. That would be more than ill-advised." Bob says.

"So what do we do, then?" Ray asks.

"I have an approach I'd like to try," Bob says.

"What kind of approach, what's it going to do?" Gerard demands, and Frank had wants to shout the same thing. He doesn't like the way Bob isn't saying everything, doesn't like the way it's clear Bob doesn't want to explain what he is going to do next.

Bob's face hardens a little bit. "I'm going to try and rid your house of spirits, isn't that what you want?"

"It's not what I want," Gerard says.

"But that's because you don't understand," Schechter says. "You can't see the danger."

"You can't see Frank!" Gerard protests.

Frank, who has been getting angrier and more nervous through the escalation of this conversation, stops suddenly when Gerard says his name. It's then that he notices the sound, not the tea kettle whistle this time, but something sharper, like a car alarm on helium. He's afraid that he's the only one who can hear it, but then he sees Bob's posture change and Bob shouts, "Everyone stand still."

Frank gets right up in front of Gerard, his back to him, trying to get Gerard to back into a corner where Frank can protect him from all sides. He sees the shadow, the shimmer of air all around, but not in one spot, not like before when it was attacking Gerard. Frank gets the horrible feeling that this is what it looks like before it attacks, moving everywhere at once, deciding.

Mikey takes a step toward his brother and Bob and Schechter call out at the same time, but it's too late, because Frank sees the thing rush for Mikey, toss him up and back like it's tossing something far lighter and less fragile. Mikey hits the wall and actually slides down it, Schechter and Ray both rushing for him and Bob shouting something Frank can't understand and waving his hands incomprehensibly. Gerard is frozen behind Frank, his eyes slack. Frank realizes a second later why – the shimmering air has collected above Gerard and is swirling downward, headed right for him.

Frank reaches for Gerard and can't touch him, and he feels the panic starting to make him both stupid and slow, and so he tries again, knowing that if he fails, the thing's going to get Gerard, just like last time. Frank tries again and again until he gets Gerard right around the ribs and he sees Gerard's painful intake of breath. Frank shoves so that Gerard goes down and Frank feels the cold crash over him, feels all his thoughts fade, sees only the telescoping darkness closing in and he sees Gerard see him, their eyes meet for just a second before Frank slips into the dark and the cold.

  
When Frank comes to, it's to a cacophony of voices. Ray seems to be the only one who's not shouting, and Frank thinks it's because he's deliberately taken himself out of the conversation to inspect a crack in the ceiling from the safety of his three-step ladder. Mikey and Gerard are shouting at each other and at Bob, Bob is trying to talk over both of them, and Schechter seems to be shouting at no one in particular, a string of curses echoing around the hallway.

"It was Frank, I saw him," Gerard shouts. "He saved me."

"I am not arguing with you about what you saw, Gerard," Bob says, his voice forceful.   
"But you're not understanding that the significant part of what just happened was entirely about the thing that was attacking you."

"And what's worse, it wasn't just fucking about you," Schechter says.

"If you think you're in danger, then you should - "

"You watch your fucking mouth," Schechter says and Gerard looks startled. "I'm talking about the fact that it attacked your little brother."

Gerard pales when he looks at Mikey and Frank notices for the first time that Mikey's bleeding from a bump on his forehead.

"I think it wouldn't hurt all of us to calm down for a minute," Ray says, from the ladder, and everyone goes quiet. "Mikey, I think your head cracked this wall but good," Ray adds, and Mikey actually laughs.

"Hard-headed, just like my brother," Mikey says, a little weakly, and Gerard rushes forward and hugs Mikey, but winces when Mikey wraps his hand around his ribs. Frank thinks perhaps he took Gerard down a little too hard.

"You're the one who supposedly knew all about ghosts. Oh, I went into an abandoned house at midnight with Pete Wentz," Gerard says, mocking Mikey, and Schechter cackles.

"This is not what I thought was gonna happen ghost hunting," Mikey says.

"This isn't ghost hunting," Bob says, and he looks quite sad.

"What's the difference between ghost hunting and.....this?" Ray asks. "What you do."

"I don't look for ghosts," Bob says, and pushes his sunglasses up onto his forehead. "I don't go looking for them because I don't like what has to happen when I find them."

"What do you mean?" Gerard asks. "What happens to them?"

"They move on," Mikey says quickly.

"You're not here to help Frankie, are you?" Gerard says hotly. The temporary truce and the calm of Ray's joke are gone again. "You're here to send him away."

"He doesn't belong here," Mikey tries to say but Gerard waves a hand at him.

"Where are you going to send him?" Gerard demands from Bob. "What happens when you send him away from here?"

"I don't know," Bob says.

"What the hell does that – "

"I don't know!!" Bob shouts and Gerard goes silent. "I don't know what happens next, okay? I don't know what comes after this world. I don't know whether ghosts go somewhere different, whether they go to heaven or hell, whether there's actually a thing such as heaven or hell, if even people really go anywhere, or whether I'm just shuttling them off to some other place where they'll be half-whole, tortured and lonely and sad."

"It just seemed like," Gerard starts and then stops. "It just seemed like you should know, since this is what you do."

Bob laughs, and it's not a happy laugh, it chills Frank. "Do you want to know why this is what I do? Why I own a grimoire and know Latin and own expensive recording equipment that's better than most professional musicians afford?" Bob doesn't wait for an answer, and Frank thinks none of them seem ready to refuse the explanation. Schechter even looks curious. "This isn't on the regular tour," Bob says. "It's not good for everyone to know where you come from, sometimes makes them nervous. To see how you got started. Makes them think they might end up like you, driving hundreds of miles in a weekend, paranoid as all fuck."

Ray, Gerard, Mikey, and Schechter are all rapt, and Frank is, too, drawn to this sudden change in Bob's energy, this break in his cool, this raw feeling coming from him, still dangerous, but somehow less of a threat now that he is talking about himself and not coming after Frank.

"I had an imaginary friend, when I was a kid. Seemed normal enough, even to my parents. Except that I could see my friend. He was transparent, but I thought it was normal. We played, he listened to me. Then the dog got sick. Then my parents got sick. Then I got sick." Bob stops. "I got so sick I almost died. Then someone who does what I do now came and sent my invisible friend away. The thing was, he was too late, because my parents had become like him. They were ghosts. The fucking dog was a ghost. And I lived with them in the house for years, once my grandmother had moved in to take care of me. I talked to my parents every day, to their ghosts, but it wasn't really them. I never really got better, and so the guy came back, but I had to help, because all the ghostly energy, it was centered around me. So, I learned how to send my parents and my pet dog and my fake invisible friend to the great beyond. And there was really nothing else to do after that, it's not like I was going to go to college."

Everyone's silent. Gerard's the one who steps forward. "I'm sorry," Gerard says, resting his hand on Bob's arm. Bob nods, and slips his sunglasses down over his eyes.

"So, are we gonna do this thing?" Bob says. "I don't know what's gonna happen, I never know, but I either try and fix this tonight or I leave you and you don't call me back, you don't ever tell me what happens to you, ok?"

Everyone looked to Gerard. "We'll do it tonight," Gerard says after the longest moment, and Frank thinks he can feel his heart break right there. It's good though, it's good, it's time for Frank to go, he knows it. It's time for him to leave Gerard, and trust that Bob will get rid of the other spirit when he sends Frank away, too. As long as he gets them both, Frank thinks, it'll be ok.

"Let me know when you're ready," Bob says.

  
Gerard comes to get Bob just as it is getting dark.

"You're not telling me everything," Gerard says. Bob laughs.

"What is it you want to know?"

"You know something about the two ghosts," Gerard says. Bob doesn't try to disagree. Frank wonders how Gerard knows that Bob has left something out, whether Gerard is better at reading Bob when Frank's been too scared of him to pay attention.

"The thing about Frank," Bob says and Frank startles when Gerard does at the mention of his name, "is that he probably wouldn't be here, if you hadn't moved in. He would have just found his way back onto the path."

Gerard looks stricken. "It's my fault?"

"No," Bob says quickly. "No, it's not like that. But you're part of the reason he's still here."

"So," Gerard says, and Frank feels Gerard consider the question like there's a limit and he has to ask the right one. "If I'm keeping Frank here, I'm somehow….giving the other ghost power, too?"

"Something like that," Bob says. "That's why it's your decision, what we do next."

Gerard studies Bob's face, and then he looks around the room, his eyes going unfocused. Frank thinks maybe Gerard is looking for him.

"I'm ready," Gerard says, looking back at Bob. "I mean, I guess, I don't really know."

"It's ok," Bob says, and gestures for everyone to come over." "Everyone sit down," Bob says, "in a circle."

"No chalk line?" Schechter asks, hesitant.

Bob says seriously. "We're the circle." Frank is standing on the stairs, watching as everyone sits, and then Bob says, "No, no, no, Gerard, you go inside the circle."

"What?" Gerard's voice is small.

"You go in the circle," Bob says gently. "That's why it's us. No chalk or salt or anything, but us, protecting you."

Mikey looks the most nervous of them all, which Frank thinks has to do with the bump on his head and the realization of how much the spirits can actually hurt them, and how much responsibility they're going to have to watch over Gerard. Gerard notices Mikey's expression and he reaches forward and ruffles his brother's hair. Mikey bats him away, but looks reassured.

Frank is skeptical of the whole thing, but if there's a chance that Bob can make this work, can get rid of the other spirit, can make Frank stop hurting Gerard, than Frank is willing to do whatever he can to make that happen, even if it means enduring séances and spells and things that don't work.

"Now I'm going to give each of you one of the things that Schechter brought back, and I want you to keep them facing the way I hand them to you, and don't tear the tissue paper."

"It feels like Christmas," Gerard says.

"Are you going to tell us what they are?" Mikey asks.

"No," Bob says. "Not yet. Opening their packaging is part of the ritual, ok? I need you all to make sure to open them in the order that I tell you. It's a chain of power we'll be building and we can't break it." Everyone nods solemnly. "I've got to set up the candles and read a few things from the grimoire, ok, so, you can all relax for a few minutes."

Bob begins reading and lighting candles and Gerard breathes in and exhales loudly a few times. "Good, do some yoga there," Schechter says, and Ray cracks up, and then Mikey shushes him.

Ray looks apologetically over at Bob, who shrugs at Ray and then, Frank can hardly believe it, he winks at him. Ray turns three shades of red. And Frank can't tell if he's offended or what, that Bob and Ray are still flirting. But then Bob tilts his head, and Ray puts his hand on Gerard's shoulder. Gerard startles for a minute and then he leans into Ray's hand. They're all watching out for Gerard, Frank knows that. They're here, and that circle is going to be strong, protecting Gerard from whatever is coming.

"I'm going to have to lock the grimoire up, now," Bob says, "since we're conjuring and we don't want what we're conjuring to read what's in here." Bob takes out an elaborate case which he locks with a combination of keys, and then he sets a white candle on top of the case.

"Ok," Bob says. "I'm going to turn out the lights, and then as soon as I light the first candle, I need you all do to as I ask, no matter what happens. If one of us breaks the circle after we start this next part, we all risk getting hurt, and what's worse, we risk Gerard, who's going to be doing a fair amount of the work."

"I am?" Gerard asks.

"Why do you think you're in the circle?" Mikey asks, like this is his hundredth séance and Gerard is the new guy.

"Ok, here we go," Bob says, and starts reading from a small, leather book, in Latin. The moment he turns a page, Frank can see the other spirit, a shimmery, steam-like, threatening thing on the other side of the room. After a minute, Bob sees it, too, and he puts his finger to mark his place in the text and says," Schechter, you go around and light everyone's candles. As Schechter lights your candle, place your hands on top of the head of the person to your right, like you're blessing them, and repeat back what I'm going to read now." Bob reads a short phrase in Latin, three times, and then Schechter lights Mikey's candle. Mikey says the phrase over Ray's head, Ray says it over Schechter, and Schechter says it over Bob. Then Bob gets up on his knees and says the phrase, and a few others, over Gerard.

"You ok?" Bob asks Gerard, who looks like he wants to answer no.

"Yeah," he says.

"Here comes the hard work, then," Bob says. "I need you to talk to Frank."

"Ok," Gerard says, and Frank can hear in Gerard's tone that it's not that hard at all.

"I mean, you need to talk to him, where you can see him. Like you told me you've done before, right?"

"In a dream?"

"Sort of," Bob says. "I'm going to send you into a place that's like a dream, but you won't be asleep. Do you think you can get Frank to follow you there?"

"Nothing's going to happen to him, is it?" Gerard demands.

"No, you're just going to talk," Bob says. "You'll be in control of the situation, so you don't have to ask Frank the things I ask you to, but you need to remember that if you don't, we might not be able to get this other spirit to leave you alone. Remember what we talked about, Gerard," Bob says, and Gerard straightens up at his name.

"Ok," Gerard says. Bob begins by lighting a small bundle of dried herbs tied with a white string and blowing on them until they smoke. It smells rich and spicy, something familiar that Frank can't quite place. Bob begins humming, a tune that feels the same as the smell, like a nursery rhyme that Frank recognizes from long ago.

There's enough room in the circle for Frank, and so with one eye on the spirit who's still hovering at a distance from the circle, steps in between Ray and Mikey and he sits down next to Gerard, their legs crossed and their knees touching. Gerard's eyes are closed and so Frank closes his too, and listen to Bob's humming, until he hears someone speaking. He thinks it's Bob speaking the rest of a spell, but when Frank opens his eyes, he sees it's Gerard who's talking.

"Hi," Frank says.

"You came," Gerard says, looking surprised and pleased.

They're sitting, like they were in the circle, but there's no one else, just the two of them in the hallway of the apartment, in the spot where Frank died. And Frank feels it when Gerard reaches out for his hand, his fingers brushes lightly over the top of Frank's hand.

"We shouldn't do that," Frank says, looking down at their hands. He can't help but tangle his fingers in Gerard's and he feels the rush. "I'm taking your energy."

"You can have all you want," Gerard says.

Frank hears what sounds like a hiss. It's the other spirit, hovering just a few feet away from Gerard.

"We need to get rid of that thing," Frank says. Gerard looks at it and then looks back at Frank.

"We're going to," Gerard says. He looks more confident here, calmer. "Bob says you know how."

"Me?" Frank says, shocked. "If I did, Gerard, I promise you – "

"Shh, it's ok," Gerard says. "I'll help you." Gerard leans forward and kisses Frank and Frank gasps and then slides his hands into Gerard's hair. They kiss like that for a long time, and Frank gets lost in the building feeling, the urge to kiss longer and harder, and when Gerard finally pulls away, Frank is practically panting.

"That feels so good," Frank says, looking down at his hands and then into Gerard's deep, open gaze. "It's weird to think it's not real."

"Of course it's real," Gerard says, and Frank thinks he actually sounds a little hurt.

Frank reaches out for Gerard and kisses him softly, and then pulls back. Gerard smiles at him this time. "See?" Gerard says.

"But it has to stop. I have to send away that thing. I have to go so it can follow me, isn't that it? Isn't that what's going to happen?"

"Bob says you can't see clearly, and so that's what this spell is for. We're here to help you see."

Frank blinks. "I don't understand."

"This was the easy place for me to meet you," Gerard says, "But Bob says you need to come back with me, to the circle."

'We can't stay here just a little longer?'

Gerard laughs and Frank feels warm.

"But they can't see me," and if Frank squints, he can see that he's still in the circle.

"No, they won't be able to see you, but I'll still be able to, ok?"

Frank nods, and squeezes Gerard's hand, and in the space of a blink, he's there in the circle.

"Hi," Gerard says to him.

"Can you see him? Is he there?" Mikey asks nervously. "Are you sure it's him and not - "

"It's him, Mikey," Gerard says calmly, his words stretched and slow.

"We're going to help you see, Frank," Bob says, and Frank shivers at the command in Bob's voice. "Schechter, you start, open your box and hold it up, facing Gerard." Schechter does, and when he holds it up, Frank sees that Schechter's holding a square, silver-framed mirror. As each of them open their boxes, it's the same. Ray, Mikey all have mirrors which they point at Gerard. Frank can see his reflection in them, it's no trick, but they still can't seem to see him.

Frank hears a rustle, and behind him, Bob is unwrapping a mirror for himself, and holding one out to Gerard.

"Now I need you and Frank to tell me where the other spirit is. I know Frank can see it, can't you, Frank?"

Frank nods, and Gerard says, "Yeah, he can see it."

"Ok, help us point our mirrors so it appears in every single one of ours, like a funhouse mirror, like a puzzle. Each of us needs to have the reflection of the thing in our mirror at the same time, ok?"

"What if it moves?" Ray asks.

"It won't," Frank says, because he can sense it now, more clearly than before. "It's stuck."

"Frank says it's stuck," Gerard says, because Frank keeps forgetting they can't hear him, only Gerard can.

Bob nods. "Good."

Frank tries to move one of the mirror but he can't actually touch it. "Here, tell me where its supposed to go," Gerard says, and Frank shows Gerard, moving around in the circle so that each of the mirrors are correct.

"Ok, what now," Frank says, because he's tense with waiting, he feels something hovering close and threatening.

"What now?" Gerard repeats.

"Hold your mirror up to Frank," Bob says, and Frank can tell in his voice that he's hiding something.

"What's it going to do," Frank demands, nervously, twitching, and getting ready to stand up. 'Is the mirror magic or something, am I going to get trapped in it, is it going to steal my soul or something?"

"Shh, shh, Frankie, it's ok," Gerard soothes, though he sounds just as nervous. "What's it going to do?" Gerard repeats the question back for Bob.

"I can't explain it," Bob says, "I mean, I don't really know what Frank's going to see. I just know this is what's supposed to happen next."

"Bob said I didn't have to ask you to do anything I didn't want to," Gerard says to Frank. "And if you don't want to do this, it's ok, you don't have to, we can find another way."

"There isn't another way, is there?" Frank asks. "Whatever this is going to do, I'm going to have to do it. The spirit can't stay locked there, whatever Bob did do it. It can't stay, can it?"

Gerard shakes his head, without having to ask Bob. He can tell, just like Frank now, that heightened sense of awareness. This is it. All he has to do is look in the mirror, whatever's going to happen, this has to be it.

Gerard holds up his mirror, and Frank looks down, so he's not looking in it, not yet. He looks past the mirror, up directly into Gerard's face. "Am I going to die, Gerard?"

"You're already dead," Gerard says with a hint of a laugh, but when he looks at Frank, it's all tenderness.

"But what's going to happen to me?"

"I don't know, Frankie. I don't know."

"Maybe I'll see your grandmother," Frank says, and Gerard's eyes tear and he nods.

"Yeah, tell her I say hi, ok?" Gerard's voice cracks.

Frank sees the spirit move all of a sudden and he looks into the mirror, and sees just himself, and then, in the reflection of the other mirrors, just his face a hundred times over, but then, something shimmers in the glass, something happens, and it's just one face, like it's not a reflection at all, Frank's face, looking terrified and determined and frozen in place.

Without any warning, Bob reaches out and punches the mirror Gerard's holding, smashing it to pieces.

Gerard shouts in surprise as Bob shouts, "Break them, on the floor, right now," and they all do, shards of glass flying everywhere, the sound of smashing glass louder than explosions.

And then, Frank is there. Frank is whole, he can feel the glass under his hands, the cold floor, his own heart beating. For a moment, Gerard is hugging him and Frank can feel the tears running down Gerard's cheeks, and then it all goes black.

  
"I don't understand," Mikey is saying. Frank tries to blink his eyes open but they won't quite work, his eyes just fluttering under closed lids. He can hear the sound of a broom. "How did the mirrors let Frank see the other spirit?"

"It was him," Schechter says, "The whole time, both spirits were him."

"But he's – he's alive now" Ray says. "I mean, he's not a ghost, right? He's got a body."

"So why'd he try to hurt Gerard?" Mikey demands. "It doesn't make any sense."

"He was split in two," Bob says. "Can you hand me that dust pan? Thanks." Bob continues, "Everyone has an opposite side of themselves, tucked away, in the dark."

"It was the house," Ray chimes in, and from the sound of it, he's the one with the broom. "My house is evil. Well, _my_ side is perfectly normal."

"It wasn't the house that kept Frank here, but it was what stopped him from having the choice to move on. I still don't know what it was that split him like that, I've never seen anything like it, and to be honest, I wasn't sure the plan was going to work."

"Your plan was to make him corporeal?" Schechter says, impressed.

"I didn't know what was actually possible," Bob says. "Until it happened, I didn't know if it was even an option. I just knew Frank couldn't know what we were going to do before we did it, it had to be his choice to see what he saw. So I couldn't say anything incase he heard."

"So you believed me," Gerard says. "You really believed he was there."

"Yeah," Bob says, and then shrugs it off. "And look, I was right."

Frank tries to sit up and feels dizzy. It takes him a minute to realize he's slumped awkwardly in Gerard's favorite armchair.

His aborted attempt at movement seems to have caught Gerard's eye though, because he runs over and kneels beside the chair. "It's ok, Frankie, it's ok," Gerard coos at him. Frank can't really focus, but he sees Gerard is smiling up at him, and, very hesitantly, brushing Frank's hair back from his forehead.

"Hi," Frank says croakily to Gerard and Gerard's face lights up.

"He's awake," Gerard calls and Frank watches as the blurry figures coming to stand around the chair resolve themselves into Mikey, Ray, Schechter, and Bob.

"Hey Ray," Frank says, and Ray nods at him and smiles. "Hey, I guess I haven't really met you guys yet. I'm Frank, I used to live here," he says, uselessly, and everyone laughs.

"So, my work here is done," Bob says.

"Hey, wait," Frank says, and Bob stops. "Thanks," Frank says, because he doesn't know what else to say, he can't say everything, and this, this he really means.

"Oh, you'll see me again," Bob says. "That's my hoodie you're wearing."

"What?" Frank says, and then he realizes he's not wearing anything but a hoodie and a blanket draped over his legs. "Oh my god," he says.

"Yup. We've all seen you naked," Schechter says. "My very first naked re-corporealized ghost," Schechter says.

Frank looks at Gerard, who's blushing. He smiles at Gerard, small and tender, and says, "Can I borrow a pair of your pants?"

Gerard nods. "I'll go get some right now. You close your eyes if you want. You look like you haven't slept in months."

"He died and became a ghost and now he's here, in Gerard's armchair," he hears Ray saying as he drifts off. "How are we going to explain that to people?"

  
When Frank opens his eyes again, Gerard is sitting on the floor next to Frank's feet. Frank's wearing a pair of jeans and two mismatched socks, and still, Bob's hoodie. "Hi," he says croakily and Gerard hastily hands Frank a cup of tea.

"I've missed this," Frank says.

Frank takes the tea, wrapping his hands around the mug. He inhales the steam. It's still hot, Gerard must have just made it a few minutes ago. It tastes amazing and familiar, and he takes a few long sips and hands the cup back to Gerard and then he reaches out and tugs at Gerard, asking him to come closer.

"Where is everyone?" Frank asks, because the house is strangely quiet, but he can still see the remnants of Bob's equipment and Ray's broom leaning in the corner.

"Mikey's upstairs," Gerard says, "Taking a nap. Schechter's in the back burning all the mirrors,"

Frank startles. "You can burn mirror glass?"

"Apparently," Gerard shrugs. He settles himself next to Frank in the chair. There's just enough room for Gerard to fit with their sides squished up next to each other. Frank pulls the blanket over Gerard's legs and leans into his side, his head just on Gerard's shoulder. "And Ray is showing Bob his side of the house."

"I bet he is," Frank says and Gerard laughs and Frank can feel it in his chest.

"You think they're – "

"I think there's something," Frank says.

"And what about us?" Gerard leans down, his chin on Frank's head, his lips pressing lightly and for a moment to Frank's forehead .

"I think there's definitely something," Frank says and turns so he can kiss Gerard. Gerard sighs against his mouth and then his hands wrap around Frank's shoulders so that he's flush against Gerard, comfortably tight in this chair that he's wanted to feel for so long.

Mikey comes down the stairs, and he makes a disgusted sound when he sees them, though Frank wonders how much of it's just for show. "My brother and his ghost boyfriend," Mikey says. "Pete's coming to pick me up," Mikey throws out. Frank feels Gerard tense at Pete's name. "Don't worry, I won't tell him Frank used to haunt you."

Ray and Bob knock, with Schechter following behind them, the air of wood smoke around him.

"So the mirrors are all set. I buried what was left along the ley line, facing south." Bob nods, but when Gerard catches Frank's eye he sees that he doesn't understand either and they smile at each other. Frank stands up, a lot les wobbly than he thought, though Gerard rushes to his side, incase Frank needs something to balance on.

"I want you to call me if anything is strange with Frank," Bob says to Gerard.

"You mean besides the fact that I'm alive?" Frank says, and Bob winces.

"This house is still mystically charged," Bob says, ignoring Frank, and something might try to take the place of all that energy we just released. I've set up a few things around the house, they shouldn't get in your way, but if you see something's moved weirdly, you call me. I'll be back to check on things tomorrow and take some readings."

"And for dinner," Mikey says, looking between Bob and Ray. Schechter actually snickers.

"So, kid, want to give me a hand with some of this," Schechter says, to Mikey, and Mikey lifts up the other end of one of Bob's equipment cases, Ray and Bob lifting another.

"Hey, you forgot this," Frank says, reaching for a small silver bottle. The cap isn't on all the way and some of whatever is in it that spills on Frank's hand. It's intensely cold and then it burns like it's eating Frank's skin. He screams and drops the bottle, which clatters on the floor.

Bob and Schechter drop their ends of the cases and rush over to Frank, who is shaking his hand, trying to get the pain to stop. Gerard rushes over to him, too, but a second later, Gerard pushes Frank behind him and stands in front of him with his arms outstretched.

"What the hell was that," Frank hisses but when he looks up, Bob and Schechter are both standing very aggressively toward Gerard. Frank sees the silver glint of a knife in Bob's hand. Mikey and Ray are frozen, staring off to the side.

"Back off," Gerard says firmly.

"What just happened?" Mikey demands.

"Frank just spilled holy water," Schechter says.

"I don't understand what that means," Mikey says, sounding more and more distressed.

"That wasn't holy water, that was acid or something," Frank says. "Look, it burned me." He tries to hold out his hand to show him, but Gerard forces Frank behind him, his arms still up, protecting Frank.

"Stand back from him, Gerard," Bob says calmly. "Step out of the way."

"You did this on purpose," Gerard shouts at Bob. Frank's heart is pounding. It feels unnaturally fast, but possibly just because it's so unfamiliar.

"I swear, Gerard, I didn't think anything was wrong with him," Bob says. "But I don't actually know what we're dealing with here and there are always consequences to messing with things we don't understand."

"Everyone relax and tell me what the hell it means," Ray shouts, standing in-between Bob and Schechter and Gerard and Frank. Bob still has the knife in his hand, but he lowers it when Ray steps forward.

"It means he's not human," Bob says, his voice dangerously low. It takes a long time for the words to make any sense to Frank. He stares at Bob, and then at the knife.

"So we did something wrong?" Mikey says.

"I don't know," Bob says. "But this is not right."

"Is it maybe just – I mean, he really died and now he's back so isn't that, like, something not human?" Gerard asks.

A horn honks outside. "It's Pete," Mikey says, and then he catches Gerard's eye and says, "He can wait."

"You have to explain it better," Ray says, to Bob. "Can we break up this aggression, here, and everyone take a few steps back?" Ray looks at both Gerard and Bob, who nod. Gerard lowers his arms so that he's not standing directly in front of Frank.

"Frank, can we all see what happened to your hand?" Ray asks.

Frank doesn't really want to show them, not if it's going to prove Bob right, but Ray's being reasonable and so Frank agrees. He steps aside from Gerard, but Gerard catches his sleeve and holds him back. They all look at Frank's hand, which is burned in a splash pattern, like oil, red and angry.

Ray goes and gets the bottle that Frank dropped, and splashes some of it onto his hand. "No, don't, you'll get - "Frank shouts, worried Ray will get burned, but Ray doesn't get burned at all. He's just holding a palm full of water.

The horn honks again outside.

"Oh my god," Frank says, looking directly at Bob. "So this means, I'm, like, what, a living ghost or something?" He doesn't know what question to ask first, or what the question even means.

"I don't know," Bob says. "You could be some kind of corporeal spirit."

"There is nothing wrong with him," Gerard says. "I think you all need to go."

"I can't leave here with him like that," Bob says. "I did that, and if he's a danger, if he hurts anyone – "

"He's not going to hurt anyone," at the same time Frank says, "Could I hurt someone? Like, without meaning it?"

Bob nods.

"It's the same as before, Gerard," Frank says, turning back to him, and though he doesn't want to look away, doesn't ever want to look away from Gerard's worried eyes, he knows what he has to do. It was too good to be true, that he could just come back from the dead. "I could hurt you without meaning to, like when I was the other spirit. So we'd better just get it over with."

Frank takes a few long strides toward Bob, who raises the knife again.

Gerard rushes forward, tackling Frank around the waist as Ray reaches up for Bob's arm, saying gently, "Ok, slow down everyone, put the knife down before one of us gets hurt," and Mikey's tugging at Gerard to let go of Frank while Schechter's trying to pull Mikey away.

They all freeze when the front door bursts open. "Fucking Jesus Christ, what's with the dagger?" Pete says, standing in the doorway, his keys dangling in one hand. And then, more cautiously, "Mikey?"

"Pete this, uh, isn't a good time," Gerard says as Frank struggles to get out of Gerard's grip.

"Yeah, I'm kind of sensing that. Sorry, I was waiting, and then I heard shouting, and I was worried, and – "

"It's fine," Mikey says through gritted teeth. He moves side to side, dodging Schechter.

"Ok, but, I'm just saying, it doesn't look fine," Pete says. "It looks like someone's about to get murdered, but, if you want me to go back outside and drive off and pretend I didn't see anything, sure, whatever you say, man."

"Wait," Frank says. Everyone stops. He has to make Gerard understand. "Bob said I could hurt someone even if I didn't mean to, so let me just go outside with him and he can exorcise me or whatever."

"He's not going to exorcise you, Frankie, he's going to kill you," Gerard shouts. Frank wishes he could reassure Gerard, but he thinks Gerard might be right. If he's already dead anyway, though, it won't make much of a difference. He was ready before, ready to move on, if that's what was going to happen. This had just been another delay.

"Wait, is this a ghost hunt?" Pete says, "Because this is not normally how they shake down in my admittedly limited experience. I mean, I've never needed a fucking silver dagger."

"Well, then you're about to get in way over your head, Wentz," Schechter says, and Pete frowns.

"You're not going anywhere," Gerard says, as Frank tries to pull away. "Bob, please," Gerard begs and Bob tucks the knife back into his boot, comes up with his palms open.

"Ok," Bob says, "Ok, I'm going to open up this case," Bob says in the same explanatory tone he used during the ritual. "I'm going to get the grimoire, but there's another knife in the case. I'm not getting the knife, just the book."

"Is someone going to tell me what's going on?" Pete asks, though it's more a hesitant request.

"Shh," Mikey says and Pete looks scolded.

"I'm gonna read something that's going to tell me something about what's going on with Frank here," Bob says, holding the grimoire open in his hands.

"You won't do anything to hurt him?" Gerard asks. Frank struggles in Gerard's grip. "Stop it, Frankie. He's not going to do anything to hurt you."

"I'm not going to hurt Frank," Bob says over both of them. "It's like a request that the house give me a hint about what's happened to you, that's all. It's a question."

"Like the mystical phone call Schechter did?"

Bob nods. "Sort of, except I'm talking to the house, which may or may not want or know how to talk back. This house, though, seems alarmingly sentient."

"Hey, I told you, my half is normal!" Ray protests.

"What do you mean, he's not human?" Pete says in a hushed voice, but Bob begins the incantation.

"Frank, you might feel something, static, dizziness, I'm not sure, but it'll only be for a minute, just tell me what happens."

Frank braces for it, for whatever's coming, and Bob continues reading. He finishes the last sentence, and gently closes the book, and then Gerard sways on the spot and passes out, his grip on Frank going slack, Frank catching him so he doesn't hit the floor hard. It takes a minute of Frank shaking him in panic and Mikey calling his brother's name for Gerard to blink his eyes open and say, "I'm fine, I'm fine, it was just – really dizzy."

"That was not what was supposed to happen," Bob says quietly, checking Gerard's pulse. Then he stands up and says, as though asking the house, "What the hell is going on?" and Frank gapes at him, because Bob's the one who's supposed to know.


End file.
